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Published Jun 2009
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Meet Mare, a grandmother with flair and a fascinating past.
Octavia and Tali are dreading the road trip their parents are forcing them to take with their grandmother over the summer. After all, Mare isn’t your typical grandmother. She drives a red sports car, wears stiletto shoes, flippy wigs, and push-up bras, and insists that she’s too young to be called Grandma. But somewhere on the road, Octavia and Tali discover there’s more to Mare than what you see. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less-than-perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American battalion of the Women's Army Corps during World War II.
Told in alternating chapters, half of which follow Mare through her experiences as a WAC member and half of which follow Mare and her granddaughters on the road in the present day, this novel introduces a larger-than-life character who will stay with readers long after they finish reading.
"Starred Review. The parallel travel narratives are masterfully managed ... Absolutely essential reading. Ages 12+." - Kirkus Reviews
"Davis gives both major and minor character very distinct traits, making them memorable. She also has an ear for dialect and the speech of the 1940s, although the modern dialogue feels stilted in places." - VOYA
"A steady travelogue, realistic banter, memorable characters, and moments of tension, insight, and understanding make this an appealing selection." - School Library Journal
This information about Mare's War was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tanita S. Davis is also the author of the young adult novel A la Carte, published by Knopf in June 2008. A native Californian, she lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
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