Tag Archives: World War II

by | July 29, 2008 · 8:15 am

Diane Chamberlain. Kiss River. Don Mills, Ontario: MIRA, 2003.

More than 10 years ago a hurricane damaged the Kiss River lighthouse, destroying the top of the tower and sending its Fresnel lens to the ocean floor. For reasons she is unwilling to share, Gina Higgins has traveled from Seattle to see the lighthouse and when she discovers the damage it sustained she becomes determined to find the lost lens. The current residents of the lightkeeper’s house–a recent widower and his artist sister–invite Gina to stay with them and she begins her quest. Gina’s modern story is interspersed with the World War II-era diary entries of Bess Poor, the teen-aged daughter of one of the previous Kiss River lighthouse-keepers. This is the second book in a loosely-connected trilogy focused on the O’Neill family and their fictional town of Kiss River, N.C.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Chamberlain, Diane, Coast, Dare, Mystery, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Romance/Relationship

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by | May 29, 2008 · 3:57 pm

Tony Earley. The Blue Star. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

Jim Glass, introduced to readers in a previous novel, Jim the Boy, has grown into a teenager. He experiences first love, but Chrissie Steppe, the object of his affections, has promised to wait for a boy who has left for service in World War II. Although this is a coming-of-age story, it is not just about Jim, but also about how a distant war ripples through the lives in one small Southern town.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2008, Earley, Tony, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Rutherford

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by | April 14, 2008 · 10:59 am

Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Blue. Honesdale, Penn.: Boyds Mills Press, 2006.

In this book for younger readers, thirteen year old narrator Ann Fay Honeycutt describes life in Hickory during World War II. When Ann Fay’s father goes to fight in the war, he leaves her in charge of the family. She trades in playing and climbing trees for the grown-up responsibilities of tending the vegetable garden and taking charge of her younger siblings. When a polio epidemic hits her town and she is stricken with the disease, Honeycutt is hospitalized and becomes close friends with another patient, an African American girl her age. The novel is based on the true story of a hospital for polio patients in Hickory in the 1940s.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Catawba, Children & Young Adults, Historical, Hostetter, Joyce Moyer, Piedmont

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by | March 13, 2008 · 9:58 am

Terry Kay. The Valley of Light. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

In the years after World War II, Noah Locke wandered from town to town, fishing, doing occasional work, and reflecting on the horrors he had seen throughout the war, especially when his unit liberated the concentration camp at Dachau. When Noah arrived in the fictional town of Bowersville, N.C. (based on the area around Hayesville), in an area known as the “Valley of Light,” he was taken by the slow small-town pace and friendly residents. Noah begins to date a young widow and enters a local fishing contest with the goal of landing a mythical, elusive bass that has captivated the town for years.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Clay, Historical, Kay, Terry, Mountains, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | · 9:58 am

Homer Hickam. The Keeper’s Son. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2003.

The tiny, fictional island of Killakeet, on North Carolina’s outer banks, is shaken when German U-Boats appear off the coast in 1941. Coast Guard Lt. Josh Thurlow, the son of the keeper of the lighthouse, takes it upon himself to protect his home. Leading an ill-equipped bunch of locals, Thurlow takes to the sea. The novel follows the emotional struggles of Thurlow and his father and also gives detailed descriptions of submarine warfare during World War II.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2003, Coast, Hickam, Homer, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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by | · 9:58 am

Alice Adams. After the War. New York: Knopf, 2000.

This novel, Adams’s last, continues the story of the Baird family begun in A Southern Exposure. The story is set in the period during and immediately after World War II in the fictional Piedmont town of Pinehill. In tracing a number of crises, large and small, Adams portrays a large and diverse cast of characters and gives special attention to the details of domestic life in North Carolina in the 1940s.

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Filed under 2000, 2000-2009, Adams, Alice, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Orange, Piedmont

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by | · 9:58 am

Daphne Athas. Entering Ephesus. New York: Viking, 1971.

The Bishop family has fallen on hard times. Forced to leave their large and comfortable house in Connecticut, they move to the small, provincial town of Ephesus, a fictional Piedmont town based on Chapel Hill. In the midst of the chaos of relocating and adjusting to life in the south, the lively Bishop daughters — Irene, Urie, and Loco Poco — are just entering adolescence. Their thoughts and observations enliven the novel, which is set amidst depression and war in the 1930s and 1940s. There is a small community named Ephesus in Davie County, but this novel is clearly set in a Piedmont college town. Entering Ephesus won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for the best work of fiction by a North Carolinian in 1972.

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Filed under 1970-1979, 1971, Athas, Daphne, Historical, Novels Set in Fictional Places, Orange, Piedmont

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