All The Stars in The Heavens by Adriana Trigiani

All The Stars In The Heavens by Adriana Trigiani
Published by Harper ISBN 978-0-06-2319191-7
Hardcover, $26.99, 464 pages

Reading Adriana Trigiani's newest novel All The Stars In The Heavens feels like watching a fascinating Turner Classic Movies documentary. I felt like putting on my best peignoir, slipping on my feathered mules, applying the reddest shade of lipstick, and mixing myself a martini garnished with olives as I dove into the story-behind-the-story of Loretta Young and Clark Gable's forbidden Hollywood romance while reclining on my bedroom chaise.

Loretta Young was a hardworking, well-known young actress when she was cast as the thirteen-years-older Clark Cable's love interest in the movie The Call of The Wild. The movie was to be shot on location in a remote area near Seattle.

Young's assistant, the former-almost-nun-until-she-was-told-by-Mother-Superior-that-she-was-not-nun-material Alda Ducci accompanied Loretta. They were among the very few women on the set, so they managed to attract the attentions of more than a few of the men.

Clark Gable avidly pursued Loretta, even though he was married. Loretta had just ended a romantic, though chaste, relationship with actor Spencer Tracy and even though she had a reputation for falling a little bit in love with her leading men, she was determined not to do so with Gable.

She resisted until she couldn't anymore, and when Loretta and Gable traveled to Seattle to be witnesses to a wedding between Alda and a set painter after a whirlwind romance, she gave in.

The affair had long-lasting consequences, and although Gable promised that he was going to divorce his wife to be with Loretta, he strung Loretta along. Loretta had a career to worry about, and home wrecker would not look good in the tabloids or on her resume.

There were so many things I loved about All The Stars In The Heavens, it could be a multi-part post, but I will just touch on the highlights.

• The novel takes real people and a true story and imagines what really happened, and those kind of stories I find irresistible when done well, and Trigiani aims high and hits a home run here.  

• I love Hollywood behind-the-scenes-stories, and to see a different side of have such unforgettable characters as Young, Gable, a young David Niven, Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy and Hattie McDaniel was thrilling.

• The scene with Gable and Hattie McDaniel on the set of Saratoga, the 1937 movie where Jean Harlow died on set, made me giddy. We see their bantering and flirting, and now I remember why I loved the scenes between Mammy and Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind so much. (GWTW is my favorite movie!)

• Women in Trigiani's books are strong women, and always strive to have a career. Here we see that Loretta worked hard to support her mother and sisters, and invested her money in real estate. How many women (or men) in Hollywood were smart enough to do that? Loretta's mother, a single mom, had to raise her four daughters, and built a stellar career in real estate investment and interior design. She was a terrific example for her girls, and Trigiani's protagonists are good examples for women to work hard and follow their dreams to get ahead.

I could go on and on, but I'll just tell you that I loved that Trigiani has stepped up her already stellar game in All The Stars In The Heavens, and you will lose yourself in a dazzling Hollywood love story that will have you googling Loretta Young/Clark Cable to find out the story that inspired this gorgeous novel. I give it my highest recommendation.

I wrote a #WeekendCooking post about the foodie passages in All The Stars In The Heavens here. 

Adriana Trigiana's website is here.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Adriana's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Adriana’s Tour Stops

Wednesday, October 14th: Time 2 Read

Thursday, October 15th: Kritters Ramblings

Friday, October 16th: A Chick Who Reads

Monday, October 19th: A Literary Vacation

Tuesday, October 20th: View from a Birdhouse

Thursday, October 22nd: Walking With Nora

Friday, October 23rd: BermudaOnion’s Weblog

Monday, October 26th: Raven Haired Girl

Tuesday, October 27th: Booking Mama

Wednesday, October 28th: Curling Up by the Fire

Thursday, October 29th: Jen’s Book Thoughts

Monday, November 2nd: Kahakai Kitchen

Tuesday, November 3rd: Books on the Table

Thursday, November 5th: I’m Shelf-ish

Thursday, November 5th: Beth Fish Reads

Friday, November 6th: Read. Write. Repeat.

Monday, November 9th: bookchickdi

Tuesday, November 10th: Drey’s Library

Thursday, November 13th: Book Journey

Friday, November 13th: Write Meg

TBD: Books Like Breathing

TBD: Peppermint PhD

Real People in Fiction

Reprinted from the Citizen:

Novels that incorporate real people in their stories are fascinating. The author takes a familiar person and the kernel of a story and, using his or her imagination, creates an interesting and vivid portrait.

There are three recent books that fit this category: Homer Hickam’s funny and poignant “Carrying Albert Home,” Adriana Trigiani’s glamorous “All the Stars in the Heavens” and Paula McLain’s engrossing “Circling the Sun.”

McLain wrote the hugely popular “The Paris Wife,” about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley. She follows that with the story of Beryl Markham, who wrote her own life story in “West With The Night." 

Markham was raised in Kenya by her father after her mother took her brother and left to return to London. Markham was a tomboy, and like her father, she trained horses and rode them in races, where she became successful.

She fought the prejudice of men who didn’t believe a woman should be doing a man’s work, and had a disastrous marriage that she tried for years to extricate herself from. Markham also became entangled in an affair with Denys Hatten, who was also involved with Karen Blixen (also known as Isak Dinesen, author of “Out of Africa”).

McLain makes you feel the dust and heat of Kenya, and she paints a riveting portrait of Markham, a complex woman ahead of her time. Markham thirsted for adventure, and although she became best known for being the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west, “Circling the Sun” mostly deals with her interesting life before that achievement.

Homer Hickam’s “Carrying Albert Home” tells the story of his parents, who, during the Depression, had an adventure of their own. According to his mother, she used to date actor Buddy Ebsen before he was famous. He was the love of her life, and she was crushed when he left her to make it big in New York. 

So Elsie marries Homer’s dad (also named Homer), and becomes the thing she dreads most: a coal miner’s wife. Buddy Ebsen sent a gift to Elsie for her marriage: an alligator she named Albert.

After a few years, Albert became too big to live in their home, so Elsie wanted to take him home to Florida to set him free. Homer goes along with this crazy idea because he loves his wife dearly, even though he fears she still loves Buddy.

Along the way from West Virginia to Florida, they have a series of adventures and meet many people, including the author John Steinbeck, who hitches a ride with them while he does research for a story he wants to write about coal miners.

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When they get to Florida, they end up having dinner with Ernest Hemingway, just as a hurricane is bearing down on the Keys. The Hickams reminded me of Forrest Gump with the way they ended up in the middle of some crazy adventures, including foiling a bank robbery and acting as stand-ins in a Tarzan movie.

Young Homer is not sure exactly what is true about his parents’ stories and what is exaggeration, so “Carrying Albert Home” is a novel, but it is rollicking, fun and yet poignant at the same time as the Hickams try to find a way to make their marriage work, even when they seemed ill-suited at times for each other.

Adriana Trigiani takes her writing in a different direction in “All The Stars In The Heavens." She takes the old Hollywood story about Loretta Young giving birth in secret to Clark Gable’s child and claiming that she adopted the baby, and adds in an Italian woman named Alda, who was asked to leave the convent where she planned to be a nun, as Loretta’s assistant, and weaves a story that will hook you from the get-go. 

You’ll feel like you are watching a behind-the-scenes documentary on Turner Classic Movies as you read about the glory days of old Hollywood, when studios controlled their stars and scandals ruined careers instead of creating them, like in today’s atmosphere. (Kardashian, anyone?)

Trigiani gives us another side to such stars as Young, Gable, Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy and David Niven, and you’ll be Googling Loretta Young the minute you finish this amazing, gorgeous story.

If you like your fiction with a little (or a lot) of reality, each of these novels should be on your to-read list. They are all enlightening and enjoyable.

If you read

BOOK: “Circling the Sun” by Paula McLain

GRADE: A-

PUBLISHER: Penguin Random House

COST: Hardcover $28

LENGTH: 384 pages

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BOOK: “Carrying Albert Home” by Homer Hickam

GRADE: A-

PUBLISHER: William Morrow

COST: Hardcover, $25.99

LENGTH: 432 pages

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BOOK: “All The Stars In The Heavens” by Adriana Trigiani

GRADE: A

PUBLISHER: Harper

COST: Hardcover, $26.99

LENGTH: 464 pages

Weekend Cooking- All The Stars in the Heavens by Adriana Trigiani

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

An Adriana Trigiani book is always something to celebrate, and her latest release, All The Stars in the Heavens is no exception. Set during the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930's, Trigiani weaves the story of her protagonist, Alda Ducci, a young Italian immigrant who is asked to leave the convent where she had planned to become a nun, with movie star Loretta Young, whom Alda ends up working with as her assistant.

Alda accompanies Loretta to Seattle for a movie shoot, where the male star is Clark Gable. Gable pursues Loretta and an onscreen romance becomes an offscreen one as well, one with far-reaching consequences.

I loved this book, it felt like watching a behind-the-scenes story on Turner Classic Movies. Trigiani takes a old Hollywood tale about Gable and Young and creates a believable and fascinating story that should be turned into a movie itself.

Loretta Young

As always, Trigiani has a few scenes that revolve around food. In her Valentine trilogy, her family dinners left me laughing and drooling over the Italian Roncolli family holiday celebrations. In All The Stars in the Heavens, we have foodie scenes like this one, as Loretta Young opens a box sent to her for her birthday from her family while she filming far away outside of Seattle.

The box was filled with glorious food: cellophane packages of noodles, German cured sausages, wedges of hard cheese, a bottle of olive oil, and a jar of Greek olives. Ruby had mixed dry biscuit ingredients in a mason jar with instructions to add eggs and bake. Another jar held the dry ingredients for chocolate cake. There was a box of See's Candy, Loretta's secret vice. A large square baker's box was nestled in the center; she lifted it out carefully and opened it. As soon as she did, the room was filled with the scent of lemon, rum and butter. Her mother had made her favorite cake for her birthday, wrapped in layers of tin foil: a southern rum cake, an old recipe handed down from her great-grandmother in North Carolina.

Who wouldn't like to get that as a birthday gift? Another great foodie scene is set in an outdoor market in Padua in Italy.

The outdoor market in Padua's grand piazza was a carnival of delicious scents and local delicacies, the harvest of the Italian countryside gathered under the sunny yellow awnings by local vendors. Baskets filled with sunflowers tied in massive bouquets were sold next to silver bins of fresh white mozzarella in icy clear water. A white canopy threw shade over a display of freshly caught silver fish with blue eyes, the catch that brought the most haggling from customers, while salami hung from the overhead beam of the portico like stalactites, marked with their prices. There were braids of fresh bread, bright green bouquets of chicory, basil, and parsley, and a slab of torrone taffy that looked like a giant square of Italian marble. The purveyor cut off pieces and wrapped them in paper as the children of Padua stood in line. The vegetables were works of art: white mushrooms on nests of green, baskets of tomatoes, white onions that looked like pearls, and fruit, blood oranges and pale green pears, sweet and fragrant. Craving sweets, Loretta bought a bag of blood oranges, and as she walked, she peeled and orange and ate it.

After reading that, I wanted to head over to Union Square Greenmarket, just to take in the sights and smells. Trigiani touches all of the readers' senses like no other author I know. Her books are a feast for every sense.

I will post a complete review of All The Stars in the Heavens on November 9th as part of TLC Tours, but you can probably tell already that I am going to give it a rave review.

Visit Adriana Trigiani's website for more information on the book here.