{"id":3174,"date":"2019-06-03T10:02:32","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T17:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3174"},"modified":"2019-06-03T10:02:32","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T17:02:32","slug":"sarah-r-shaber-louises-crossing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sarah-r-shaber-louises-crossing\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah R. Shaber: Louise’s Crossing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the seventh Louise Pearlie mystery \u2013 the first one for me, and I have to say I am now a fan.\u00a0 I was able to pick up the character threads easily and was quickly absorbed in the story of Louise Pearlie, OSS agent, crossing a wartime ocean in winter to take up an assignment in London.\u00a0 Shaber is a brisk storyteller and I was immediately drawn in to Louise\u2019s goodbye to her U.S, wartime office, to her boarding house friends, and even her packing for a winter voyage. By the end of chapter two she has her orders and is already on board ship.<\/p>\n

Home for Louise for the next 3 to 4 weeks to what was known as a \u201cLiberty\u201d ship \u2013 an idea adapted from the British to quickly produce needed cargo ships.\u00a0 They had a life expectancy of only 5 years (and only 4 survive toady).The ship Louise boards \u2013 the Amelia Earhart <\/em>\u2013 is taking much needed supplies overseas and the \u201ccasual passengers\u201d of which Louise is one, are more or less of an afterthought.<\/p>\n

Making the ship more homey is the cheerful stewardess Grace, who gives Louise the bad news that only the dining room is heated \u2013 the cabins are not.\u00a0 This is especially bad news for Louise as she\u2019s packed her heavier winter items in a trunk that\u2019s unreachable in the ship\u2019s cargo hold.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been a big fan of the ship board mystery or novel, but I liked this one, for lots of reasons.\u00a0 One was the way Shaber was able to skillfully illustrate life on a wartime ship, with all its discomforts.\u00a0 At the same time, the passengers to a man want to help the war effort in any way possible, and understand the importance of their cargo.\u00a0 They are willing to endure their discomfort.<\/p>\n

As the ship crosses the ocean they encounter the kinds of attacks you might expect from the Germans \u2013 air and sea \u2013 and there\u2019s even a moment of otherworldly beauty in the far north.\u00a0 There\u2019s also, of course, a gale, but Shaber keeps her story moving \u2013 I was totally absorbed in Louise\u2019s passage across the ocean \u2013 and then she throws in a death.<\/p>\n

As Louise is a trained OSS agent, she can\u2019t let a death pass unexamined, and she\u2019s sure it\u2019s a murder, though the captain tells her to lay off.\u00a0 Like every detective ever, she does not, gathering bits of evidence and alibis where she can. Unlike other wartime mysteries I have read, the death of the one person is relative to the ship\u2019s wartime importance and the war in general.\u00a0 It was a very realistic balance.<\/p>\n

As Louise begins to tie threads together, and the narrative is neatly wrapped up at the end of the voyage, I was impressed by Shaber\u2019s skill in telling a memorable story, but also in her ability to create a character I liked so much.\u00a0 I\u2019m delighted there are six books I haven\u2019t read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the seventh Louise Pearlie mystery \u2013 the first one for me, and I have to say I am now a fan.\u00a0 I was able to pick up the character threads easily and was quickly absorbed in the story of Louise Pearlie, OSS agent, crossing a wartime ocean in winter to take up an … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10,150,148,147,149],"class_list":["post-3174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical","tag-liberty-ship","tag-louise-pearlie","tag-sarah-r-shaber","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3176,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions\/3176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}