“Alfred, the youngest, blond, stubborn, and adventurous. Inez, the middle child, blue-eyed, a dreamer who heard music in the woods no one else could, and who could replay it by memory on her violin. And Marguerite, the eldest who even before she’d mastered her alphabet, invented feral dances and rambling plays, persuading her siblings to perform alongside her for their parents and the nanny and footmen and maids.”
Those are some lines from the first chapter of Shana Abe’s historical novel, A Crown of Stars. The story takes place in 1915 and is based on the life of the actress Rita Jolivet.
Rita longed to be an actress and does so from the West End to Broadway and eventually to silent films. She begins, much to her wealthy father’s dismay, by leaving England in order to make a name for herself in New York, taking her sister Inez with her. Inez becomes a violin virtuoso, meets the love of her life and travels the world with him.
The story turns dark in the last quarter of the book. Their brother Alfred has decided to enlist and fight in the war. When Rita learns of this, she buys passage on the Lusitania, the fastest, and considered safest, ship to cross the Atlantic to bid farewell to Alfred. As it turns out, Inez’s husband Charles is also aboard.
It’s not a spoiler to tell you that Germany bombs the ship and that very few people survive. Rita, as one of the survivors decides to write, produce and star in a film about the event so that no one ever forgets.
If you’re interested in reading a novel surrounding one of the tragedies of WWI, then you must read A Crown of Stars by Shana Abe.
