Dream When You're Feeling Blue - book review

If "Dream When You're Feeling Blue" sounds like the title of a song right out of the 40's, it should. Frank Sinatra released it seven times between 1940 and 1949. But in this particular case "Dream When You're Feeling Blue" is the title of a book written by Elizabeth Berg about that time period. Three young women in the Heaney family represent the women left behind in World War II. They then spend their otherwise lonely evenings and weekends at the USO dancing and entertaining soldiers preparing to leave or on leave. They also write letters and send care packages to let their boyfriends and others know that somebody cares.

There is a good mix of humor and sadness, birth and death. One of the girls even becomes a "Rosie the riveter" to show her patriotism and not incidentally earn a lot more than she would as a salesclerk. Many times the reader gets the idea that Ms. Berg talked with several people about their recollections of the war years and then tried to include as many as possible. We learn about rationing of commodities, censoring of letters from the battlefield, discrimination of Jews, Germans, and Japanese, blue and gold starts in the windows to signify sons in the service.

I found the ending weak, as if Berg just got tired of this project so she wrapped it up as fast as possible.It was almost as if she wanted to make some more political comments on the era but didn't want to get in the way of a good story. She failed. But the rest of the book is an interesting and educational read.