Stella Bain, Anita Shreve's 17th novel, is set before and during World War I and focuses on the eponymous protagonist's amnesiac confusion and her struggle to reclaim a life forsaken in a quest for justice.
We meet "Stella" in a field hospital on the French coast in March 1916, suffering from shrapnel wounds and memory loss. Recovering from her injuries, she adopts her name with no memory of who she really is or why she has volunteered as a nurse's aide with the Royal Army medical team. She has an American accent and no understanding of France or England. Well enough to travel, she decides London might offer clues. Arriving ill and aimless, she's rescued by a kind-hearted doctor and his wife.
Stella's fortunes turn as Dr. Bridge helps her search for her past. Her determination is rewarded when an American sees her and calls her Etna Bliss--at that moment, her memory is restored. But a bigger battle looms. She recalls what drove her to leave New Hampshire and abandon her life as a mother and wife of an abusive, power-seeking academic to volunteer at the front.
Stella/Etna is a talented, independent woman ahead of her time, and Shreve maintains the tension as Etna wages a legal battle, establishes her career and regains a family. Stella Bain spares no details in its homage to women who had to fight for justice--it's a well-crafted and engrossing story from one of the country's most established novelists. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco