Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I've started giving away books set in France, as you can see by the post on the right side of my blog, and as I looked through books, I found one that I hadn't read. It's called A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith and I won it in a giveaway. The book, set in 1931, focuses on five women, gold-star mothers whose sons died in World War I, who travel together to the American Cemetery in France.
Cora Blake was certainly not planning on going to Paris that spring. Or ever in her lifetime. She was the librarian in a small town on the tip of an island off the coast of Maine, which didn't mean she'd never traveled. She did spend two years at Colby College in Waterville and visited family in Portland, went to Arizona once, and if you counted yachting, knew most of the New England coast. Her mother had been the great adventurer, married to a sea captain who'd taken her all around the world. Cora was born off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, which might account for her venturesome spirit, but now she roamed only in books. Summer people from North Carolina and Boston would stop by the quaint old library building to chat, and wonder how she could stand to live in such a tiny place with those terrible winters.I'm not crazy about this opening, but I'll give the book a chance. Any novel that takes me to France might win my heart.
"I have everything I want right on the island," she'd say. "We're so off the beaten path, you've got to be satisfied with the way it is."
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