In the gods’ world Aphrodite invokes the four lovers’ story of struggle during wartime, to plead her case to her jealous husband. Olympus, the gods reside in a luxurious Manhattan hotel room in the 1940s during WWII.īack in France, WWI, Hazel watches Colette and Aubrey fall in love. The story is narrated by Olympian goddess of love, Aphrodite-a story she tells her husband Hephaestus who has just caught his wife cheating with Ares, god of war.

Need I say, the book is about war, love, and racial divide. All three are breaking rules by meeting around the piano late at night. They befriend the African American Aubrey and are both smitten with his piano playing-Hazel as a fellow pianist, Colette as a chanteuse. There, she meets Colette Fournier, a Belgian singer, who has lost her entire family to the Germans. Hazel, wanting to help the war effort and perhaps visit James when he’s granted a leave, travels to Saint-Nazaire, France to serve at a YMCA relief hut at an American training base. The 15 th regiment is employed to both play jazz and dig trenches, rather than the “glorious” job of fighting. James is unexpectedly called up and shipped out to France to fight in “Lovely War” (Viking 2019), by acclaimed author Julie Berry.Īubrey Edwards, a Harlem ragtime musician, enlists and becomes a member of the United States 15 th New York Infantry, an all-black regiment of soldier-musicians under the direction of the great jazz composer/band leader James Reese Europe. But this is 1917 London and WWI is raging. A shy talented pianist, Hazel, falls in love with James, a gentle man who aspires to be an architect.

Lovely War by Julie Berry