Review: Stars Over Sunset Boulevard

Stars Over Sunset Boulevard by Susan Meissner

Nostalgia for the Golden Age of Hollywood just takes over in this novel. I loved every minute of its detailed behind-the-scenes look at the big movie studios in the 1930-40s. The story follows two women who become friends as they chase their dreams. And then they must choose between friendship and dreams, and find a way to live with the losses suffered along the way.

There’s something special about a friendship story, and there’s something wonderful about Hollywood’s Golden Age. Put together, you have a novel that’s difficult to put down, but one you don’t ever want to finish.

Now I must admit there is something else fueling my warm fuzzy feelings for this story. Have you seen the movie La La Land? Sigh. Some people don’t get it, and some don’t like it. Everybody else was bowled over by it and remembers certain scenes from it with a sigh the likes of which only Scarlett O’Hara could rival. Yep. I’m in the third category. But stay with me. The reason I loved La La Land so much is because it is throwing back to Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Do you see where I’m going here? Stars Over Sunset Blvd depicts everything La La Land is throwing back to. The singing, the dancing, the dresses, the costumes! Even Scarlett O’Hara…the novel takes place on the lot where they are filming Gone With The Wind!

So maybe this review is a bit sappy. But let’s face it, the movies from the Golden Age were all a bit sappy. And sappy, in my opinion, is what we need a little bit more of these days. But understand this! Stars Over Sunset . . . is not just a light read. It deals with deep down fears and lies and secrets and how these things can bubble up over time. It's richly layered. 

Give this novel a try, I'm pretty sure you won't be sorry.

Did you see La La Land? Did you get it, not get it, hate it, or love it? Do you have a favorite “Old Hollywood” movie? Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for To Gain a Valentine by Tanya Eavenson! Winner announced in the Weekly Windup on February 13th. Check out all of our great prizes on the Prizes Galore page.

Back in the Day . . .

Do you ever wish you lived in the days of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker? How about the Cobbler, the Haberdasher, and the Milliner?

Speaking of Milliners . . . I just read this great book about a hatmaker. Carla Stewart’s The Hatmaker’s Heart. Stewart is known for her “nostalgic novels.” They generally have to do with a specific moment in time, and when I read her stories, I want to go back. Ok, keeping it real . . .. I’ve never actually lived in the roaring twenties, but when I read Hatmaker, I felt like I was there. And I wished I could wear one of her hats . . . and go back there.

It’s a story about postwar (between the wars) women and explores the paradigm shift whereby women sought after careers and college education in greater numbers than ever before. It examines the plight of women who lost husbands in the war, and tried to find a way to support families on their own. And how they came up against the old guard who promoted their traditions of women at home. 

The Hatmaker’s Heart follows a girl who loves designing and making hats back in the day when nearly every outfit required a different, matching hat. 1920s high fashion in NYC and then London dominates the scenes and provides a colorful backdrop for the drama which unfolds as Nell discovers who she is and learns to stand up for herself in a male-dominated workforce at a time of great change.

Nowadays, hats are for fun, sun, or warmth. What was the last hat you purchased for yourself? Do you like hats? Would you wear one every day if that was in style? Leave us a comment for a chance to win this week’s drawing.

The Hatmaker’s Heart is a quick and fun read. I hope you’ll give it a try.

Review by Jennifer Fromke

Garden Memories

Right when you think winter will never end, God presses the reset button and a sprig of green pokes through barren earth. In perfect timing, spring announces the season of growth and new beginnings. The players seem to burst out on the stage overnight. In the south, they’re already everywhere.

Spring is a time of preparation and planning, anticipation and looking forward, but I always turn nostalgic this time of year. The reason is because my mother was a great gardener. I don’t know why her skill didn’t rub off me. Or why plants still cringe when they see me coming.

Mama certainly taught me everything to make a garden grow. We had a large garden away from the house, large in that it ran an acre or so, planted mostly in corn and peas, beans, okra, tomatoes, all those vegetables that would be frozen or canned. I was even allowed a couple of rows for my popcorn. Did you know it gets hot enough in South Georgia to pop corn on the stalk? I couldn’t find a picture of it, but take my word for it—it does.

The garden patch near the house was reserved for all the salad vegetables; lettuce, cabbage, carrots, radishes, beets, and scallions. I wasn’t too fond of eating those vegetables, so it’s no surprise I balked at working in the garden, especially on Saturday mornings when Bugs Bunny was on.

It wasn't bad enough I missed cartoons, but my mother seemed to make the whole thing harder than it should have been. She choose this spot where Bermuda grass loved to grow, and insisted we dig it up with a hoe, shake it until the dirt and worms fell out, and haul it off to be burned. Mama had a hate thing going with this Bermuda grass.

But she knew what she was doing. Her garden patch had no need for fertilizers or manure. We didn’t have to worry about additives. Yet that was the richest, blackest dirt on the face of the earth, and well aerated by earthworms too. The worms were usually deposited into a tin can for fish bait.

Mama couldn’t stand a blade of grass anywhere in her yard, and she kept the bare paths swept with brooms made of dog fennel. Every other square inch of the yard was filled with flowers, mainly annuals she sowed from seeds. You can’t get those seeds anymore except as heirloom. They’ve been tampered with in attempts to improve them—or keep people from growing their own—until they don’t grow from seed anymore. Pansies, petunias, daises, asters, marigolds, carnations, sweet-william. I can’t remember all the different ones.

Besides all the flowers and dirt paths, flowering trees of dogwood, red-bud, and holly were gathered from the woods and strategically placed around the yard. I Wish I could show you a picture of my mother’s front yard, but all that remains is in my mind.

The first stirrings of spring remind me of that garden. I wish my yards contained such beauty, or that I could grow such vegetables. But I know the hard work that went into them. I never developed a talent for gardening, and by the time I was in fifth-grade, my mother dismissed me from garden chores. Maybe because she was afraid I’d kill more plants than I helped, but I think it was really because she saw the value in studies, reading, and writing. She recognized that the seeds planted in my brain would yield more than those I managed to plant in the ground.

Is anyone out there an avid gardener like my mother? Do you have a garden that rivals yesteryear’s?