Product Description

New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg takes us to Chicago at the time of World War II in this wonderful story about three sisters, their lively Irish family, and the men they love.
As the novel opens, Kitty and Louise Heaney say good-bye to their boyfriends Julian and Michael, who are going to fight overseas. On the domestic front, meat is rationed, children participate in metal drives, and Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller play songs that offer hope and lift spirits. And now the Heaney sisters sit at their kitchen table every evening to write letters–Louise to her fiancé, Kitty to the man she wishes fervently would propose, and Tish to an ever-changing group of men she meets at USO dances. In the letters the sisters send and receive are intimate glimpses of life both on the battlefront and at home. For Kitty, a confident, headstrong young woman, the departure of her boyfriend and the lessons she learns about love, resilience, and war will bring a surprise and a secret, and will lead her to a radical action for those she loves. The lifelong consequences of the choices the Heaney sisters make are at the heart of this superb novel about the power of love and the enduring strength of family.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52882 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-29
• Released on: 2008-01-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A Rita Hayworth look-alike and her sister keep the home fires burning for young men going off to fight WWII in Berg's nostalgic tale of wartime romance and family sacrifice. Hoping her boyfriend, Julian, will propose before shipping out to the Pacific, beautiful redhead Kitty Heaney discovers not only is she not engaged, but she's enlisted as the delivery person for her sister Louise's engagement ring from Michael, her boyfriend, who has departed for the European front. Distance makes Louise's and Michael's hearts grow fonder while Kitty discovers independence through her job at a bomber factory. As the months go by, Louise learns she is pregnant and Kitty meets an attractive soldier (one of many the girls encounter) at a USO dance. As the young soldiers offer a range of feelings about war from humor to anger, wonder to despair, Berg (We Are All Welcome Here; The Handmaid and the Carpenter; 2000 Oprah pick Open House) captures changing attitudes toward working women and single mothers in this sentimental celebration of a bygone era. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
In Chicago, the Heany sisters, Kitty and Louise, send their boyfriends off to fight in WWII and faithfully write two-page letters every day, while sister Tish writes to as many soldiers as she can. Listeners see how the war changed societys view of working women--until the men came home--and get glimpses into the sacrifices made on the home front. As narrator, Berg does well with dialogue. Her sparkling personality shines through the characters. Everyone sounds so nice, so decent, so 1940s. While Bergs use of details, such as food rationing, pin curls, and USO dances, gives a strong sense of time, its a saccharine sweet, sentimentalized look back through rosy pink nostalgia. This is not Bergs best, but its worth a listen. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
The best-selling, prolific Berg has reimagined the biblical story of Mary and Joseph in Nazareth in he Handmaid and the Carpenter (2006) and re-created the turbulent civil rights drama of 1960s Mississippi in We Are All Welcome Here (2005). She sets her latest in Chicago during World War II, featuring three Irish Catholic sisters--Kitty, Louise, and Tish Heaney. The novel opens as Kitty and Louise say good-bye to their boyfriends at Union Station as they head off to war. Over the next three years, the sisters--amid the usual sibling squabbles over borrowed clothes and makeup--learn what it means to sacrifice during wartime. Kitty takes on an exhausting job at Douglas Aircraft; Louise, deeply in love with her boyfriend, keeps her worries to herself while writing him upbeat letters full of the news of home; and Trish spends her weekends at USO dances, promising to write to every soldier she meets. Berg makes the most of her Chicago setting, working in references to iconic institutions such as the old Marshall Field's department store and the Palmer House hotel. She also deftly mixes up the tone, moving easily between the wry dialogue of the long-married Heaney parents and the sad and affecting letters from the soldiers at the front. Although a final plot twist may not be fully credible, it does little to detract from this affectionate tribute to the patriotic 1940s and the women of the Greatest Generation. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Authors shouldn't narrate their own books
I enjoyed The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg so much that I rushed out to get audiobook versions of some of her other work. Why do authors read their own material? It never works. I couldn't get through the first CD. A thin voice. Irritating. Grating, in fact. Especially after the creamy richness of listening to Jill Tanner's narration in Atonement.

Publishers should discourage authors from reading their own work, much the same way movie studios discourage them from writing screenplay adaptations of their books. It's another art form. Leave the narration to the vocal performers.

You might have a different experience with the written word, but I don't recommend the audio version.

I actually returned this one.
I bought the book, read it quickly, then returned it to the store for a full refund. I don't usually do that, but even paperbacks cost a fair amount of cash now and my shelf space is at a premium, and frankly I didn't want to waste either one on this piece of trite garbage. The story was very strange, with characters being built up, then acting out of character, and it seemed to be an excuse to try to take some of the shine off the Greatest Generation. I was so disappointed when I read it, I didn't even want to send it along to my mother or sister, like I usually do when I enjoy a book but don't want to keep it. It's not that I'm cheap, but I plain didn't want one cent of my money going to this author, or to the publisher who put out this drek.

nice little sentimental journey
Anyone interested in "homefront" style stories will enjoy this one. A lovely, simple story of an engaging family, somewhat predictable, and I would not be surprised if Hallmark picks this up as a movie. Thankfully, it is not written in the first person present; that extremely annoying, self-absorbed recounting of every action and thought of the narrator as it is happening (!) as most of Elizabeth Berg's books are written, which is why I can't get through any of her other books, though I have tried.. She has wonderful ideas for stories but of all her books, this is the one that I DO recommend.