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Blog Tour: Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and The Great War edited by Heather Webb: A Book Review


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Print Copy of FALL OF POPPIES



Fall of Poppies
Stories of Love and the Great War
Contributions by: 
Hazel Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer Robson, 
Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland, 
Lauren Willig, Marci Jefferson, edited by Heather Webb
Releasing March 1st, 2016 
William Morrow

Source: This book was given to me by Tasty Book Tours in Exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis: Top voices in historical fiction deliver an intensely moving collection of short stories about loss, longing, and hope in the aftermath of World War I—featuring bestselling authors such as Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited by Heather Webb.

     A squadron commander searches for meaning in the tattered photo of a girl he’s never met…

     A Belgian rebel hides from the world, only to find herself nursing the enemy…

     A young airman marries a stranger to save her honor—and prays to survive long enough to love her…The peace treaty signed on November 11, 1918, may herald the end of the Great War but for its survivors, the smoke is only beginning to clear. Picking up the pieces of shattered lives will take courage, resilience, and trust.

     Within crumbled city walls and scarred souls, war’s echoes linger. But when the fighting ceases, renewal begins…and hope takes root in a fall of poppies.

     My Review: Fall of Poppies is a collection of love stories set during World War I by nine top historical fiction authors. While these stories take place during one of history’s darkest moments, these stories are full of hope and love. These stories cover many different aspects of love, for instance a mother’s love for her son, two young lovers torn apart, and how a family’s love for another has been affected by the war. These stories also focus on the cost that the war has caused these characters.

     Most of the characters are likable and are very relatable. Most of the stories featured are told from female protagonists, while two of the stories are from a male’s perspective. Each of the female protagonists are strong. Each of them have lost someone they have loved during the war. It focuses on their personal struggles and challenges. Yet, the war has made the characters to be very strong. Some of these women are very emotional, and the war is very personal for them. One, a grieving mother, is willing to do anything including killing a regiment that killed her son to try to cope with her loss. 

     As for the male protagonists, I did like Wes. He was a character, who has often been in the shadow of his charming brother. He meets a young woman who has troubles of her own, and he marries her. His wife gives him hope. She writes him letters every day. He is touched that someone cares for him and thinks about him everyday. Because of his wife, he has something to live for. He fights to survive so he can be with her. The other male protagonist, Octavian, I did not really like. I could not connect with him.

     Overall, this anthology is about family, friendship, loss, love, and hope. I liked all the stories for they were really well-written, and I was captivated by all except for “The Airman in Paris” by Beatriz Williams. I did not really have a favorite in this because I loved all but one equally.Each of them kept me reading in one sitting, and I was sad when the last story ended. This anthology was an emotional and poignant read that will linger with you even after you read the last page. I recommend this anthology for anyone who likes World War I era stories, or anyone who likes stories of love that triumphs through difficult situations.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 Excerpt: from “Hour of the Bells” by Heather Webb

     Beatrix whisked around the showroom, feather duster in hand. Not a speck of dirt could remain or Joseph would be disappointed. The hour struck noon. A chorus of clocks whirred, their birds popping out from hiding to announce midday. Maidens twirled in their frocks with braids down their backs, woodcutters clacked their axes against pine, and the odd sawmill wheel spun in tune to the melody of a nursery rhyme. Two dozen cuckoos warbled and dinged, each crafted with loving detail by the same pair of hands—those with thick fingers and a steady grip. 

     Beatrix paused in her cleaning. One clock chimed to its own rhythm, apart from the others. 
She could turn them off—the tinkling melodies, the incessant clatter of pendulums, wheels, and cogs, with the levers located near the weights—just as their creator had done before bed each evening, but she could not bring herself to do the same. To silence their music was to silence him, her husband, Joseph. The Great War had already done that; ravaged his gentle nature, stolen his final breath, and silenced him forever. 

     In a rush, Beatrix scurried from one clock to the next, assessing which needed oiling. With the final stroke of twelve, she found the offending clock. Its walnut face, less ornate than the others, had been her favorite, always. A winter scene displayed a cluster of snow-topped evergreens; rabbits and fawns danced in the drifts when the music began, and a scarlet cardinal dipped its head and opened its beak to the beauty of the music. The animals’ simplicity appealed to her now more than ever. With care, she removed the weights and pendulum, and unscrewed the back of the clock. She was grateful she had watched her husband tend to them so often. She could still see Joseph, blue eyes peering over his spectacles, focused on a figurine as he painted detailing on the linden wood. His patient hands had caressed the figures lovingly, as he had caressed her. 

     The memory of him sliced her open. She laid her head on the table as black pain stole over her body, pooling in every hidden pocket and filling her up until she could scarcely breathe.
“Give it time,” her friend Adelaide had said, as she set a basket of jam and dried sausages on the table; treasures in these times of rations, yet meager condolence for what Beatrix had lost.

     “Time?” Beatrix had laughed, a hollow sound, and moved to the window overlooking the grassy patch of yard. The Vosges mountains rose in the distance, lording over the line between France and Germany along the battle front. Time’s passage never escaped her—not for a moment. The clocks made sure of it. There weren’t enough minutes, enough hours, to erase her loss.

     As quickly as the grief came, it fled. Though always powerful, its timing perplexed her. Pain stole through the night, or erupted at unlikely moments, until she feared its onslaught the way others feared death. Death felt easier, somehow. 

     Beatrix raised her head and pushed herself up from the table to finish her task. Joseph would not want her to mourn, after two long years. He would want to see her strength, her resilience, especially for their son. She pretended Adrien was away at school, though he had enlisted, too. His enlistment had been her fault. A vision of her son cutting barbed wire, sleeping in trenches, and pointing a gun at another man reignited the pain and it began to pool again. She suppressed the horrid thoughts quickly, and locked them away in a corner of her mind.

     With a light touch she cleaned the clock’s bellows and dials, and anointed its oil bath with a few glistening drops. Once satisfied with her work, she hung the clock in its rightful place above the phonograph, where a disk waited patiently on the spool. She spun the disk once and watched the printed words on its center blur. Adrien had played Quand Madelon over and over, belting out the patriotic lyrics in time with the music. To him, it was a show of his support for his country. To Beatrix it had been a siren, a warning her only son would soon join the fight. His father’s death was the final push he had needed. The lure of patrimoine, of country, throbbed inside of him as it did in other men. They talked of war as women spoke of tea sets and linens, yearned for it as women yearned for children. Now, the war had seduced her Adrien. She stopped the spinning disk and plucked it from its wheel, the urge to destroy it pulsing in her hands.

     She must try to be more optimistic. Surely God would not take all she had left.

Reprinted Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers



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     Jessica Brockmole is the author of the internationally bestselling Letters from Skye, an epistolary love story spanning an ocean and two wars. Named one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2013, Letters From Skye has been published in seventeen countries.



     Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home and A Memory of Violets. She writes regularly for the national press, magazines and websites in Ireland and the UK.



     Evangeline Holland is the founder and editor of Edwardian Promenade, the number one blog for lovers of World War I, the Gilded Age, and Belle Époque France with nearly forty thousand unique viewers a month. In addition, she blogs at Modern Belles of History. Her fiction includes An Ideal Duchess and its sequel, crafted in the tradition of Edith Warton.



     Marci Jefferson is the author of Girl on the Golden Coin: A Novel of Frances Stuart, which Publisher’s Weekly called “intoxicating.” Her second novel, The Enchantress of Paris, will release in Spring 2015 from Thomas Dunne Books.



     Kate Kerrigan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ellis Island trilogy. In addition she has written for the Irish Tatler, a Dublin-based newspaper, as well as The Irish Mail and a RTE radio show, Sunday Miscellany.



     Jennifer Robson is the USA Today and international bestselling author of Somewhere in France and After the War is Over. She holds a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Jennifer lives in Toronto with her husband and young children.



     Heather Webb is an author, freelance editor, and blogger at award-winning writing sites WriterUnboxed.com and RomanceUniversity.org. Heather is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and she may also be found teaching craft-based courses at a local college



     Beatriz Williams is the New York TimesUSA Today, and international bestselling author of The Secret Life of Violet Grant and A Hundred Summers. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons. She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. William Morrow will publish her forthcoming hardcover, A Certain Age, in the summer of 2016. 



     Lauren Willig is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association’s annual list of the best genre fiction. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.


Comments

  1. Lovely review! Thank you for hosting FALL OF POPPIES today!

    Crystal, Tasty Book Tours

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds like an amazing read, this is my kind of book I look forward to reading it. I am into a darker Hist. fiction read right now, Ice Whispers by K. Willow (kwillow.com is her site). This is a fantastic, raw read set in the time of Slavery in the Deep South. I recommend it!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds like an amazing read, this is my kind of book I look forward to reading it. I am into a darker Hist. fiction read right now, Ice Whispers by K. Willow (kwillow.com is her site). This is a fantastic, raw read set in the time of Slavery in the Deep South. I recommend it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi, Thanks. I read and liked Iced Whispers by K. Willow. You can read my review here: http://www.historywomanperspective.com/2015/09/blog-tour-hidden-hills-saga-ice.html

    ReplyDelete

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