It's 1941 and the Coleman family has been looking forward to Christmas all year. The Great Depression has finally ended and Gerald and Irene are looking forward to giving their five children a long-awaited "perfect" Christmas with plenty of presents under the tree and a veritable feast. And then, December 7, 1941, the day that shall live in infamy. Now, Gerald and Irene must face the fact that 19-year-old Jonathan and 17-year-old Joseph will, no doubt, join the fight - with 14-year-old Thomas only a few years removed from the same possible fate. Still, the family is determined to make this a special Christmas.
Alan Simon's story itself is excellent. A bit of sweetness, a bit of humor, a touch of sass, the parents seldom without a cigarette in their grasp, the mother with a never-ending list of chores and tasks to be completed each day. The First Christmas of the War feels like America, 1941. (And also 1951...I couldn't help but think of old I Love Lucy episodes on occasion.) I did have two big gripes with this book, though.
First, it needs some serious editing. From missing commas (dates, city-state combinations, etc.) to run-on sentences to "dawning gas masks" (I'm pretty sure Simon meant for everyone to be "donning gas masks"), the mistakes are glaring and distracting. Second, as a type of introduction, I suppose, Simon introduces each character, along with the major plot points for that person. For example, of Charlene, the intro states, "The third child in the family and the oldest daughter, Charlene has just become secretly engaged at the age of sixteen..." Since this is a major plot point, it's unclear to me why Simon chose to unveil so much before the reader has even reached the table of contents.
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