Chapter 1
May 3, 1918
Camp Greene Army Training Camp
Charlotte, North Carolina
I first realized I was a star when I was twelve. It was a moment just like this one, where the reverberation of my voice hung glittering in the air, nearly as bright as the spotlights, until the applause swallowed it up in a deafening swell that made my heart all but stop. Adoration is an addiction. Everybody warns about the perils of drink, but nobody thinks to tell a young girl that once she’s become the darling of her town, she’ll want to become the darling of her country and then her world. And once she’s done all that and realized that life off the stage can turn nightmarish in a blink, she’ll crave regular roaring applause or risk absolute despondency.
The shouting was riotous tonight. It was my kind of crowd despite my having a persistent headache and a throat that felt much like the strep infections I got frequently in girlhood. I ignored them both. They were only nuisances. Colds came up now and then, determined to ruin all the fun, but I wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t allow it. I’d never canceled a show. Not once in my thirty-two years. At first I persevered through any sort of discomfort for the audience’s love, but now, recently, I kept on for myself. Onstage, my thoughts were fixed on the music and the laughter and the moment. There were no questions, no grief, no shadows. Those all met me at the curtain, but for the glorious time in the spotlight, I was the girl I used to be.
“‘Pack Up Your Troubles’!” someone hollered from the back of the theatre. I grinned and mopped my forehead with my palm, pushing my black curls—neatly set by yours truly and long ruined by my tumbling across the stage—back against the brim of my little pixie cap.
“Now, I think we should give poor Mr. Keeghan here a break for a minute or two, don’t you suppose?” I shouted. “He’s been playing for an hour straight.” I could hear the fatigue in my piano man, Stuart Keeghan, in the way he’d lazily trilled the notes on “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and he’d barely been able to keep up with the pace of my cartwheels and flips before that. I stole a glance at him, and he nodded wholeheartedly. His face was flushed with exertion. I supposed at times I forgot that he was my parents’ age and not mine, that it was only me and him keeping this show afloat instead of the full crew we had in New York.
The crowd booed, and I stepped to the front of the stage and gave them the same disapproving glance I’d made when I’d played a teacher managing unruly pupils in the musical Roses in the Garden. They’d used a likeness of me making that expression on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, wearing a sultry sequined gown that was most certainly not my plain teacher costume. The magazine had been so popular, the art had been transformed to posters.
The boys recognized the expression immediately, and the noise changed direction to cheering. I smiled and tipped my head at the audience. I didn’t know how many were there—you never could really tell because of the light.
“How about a joke or two?” I said, my voice seeming to barely project as it did in other theatres. My head throbbed, and at once, although I was standing absolutely still, my body felt like it was spinning in circles. The heat, that had only moments before bathed my costume from pantaloons to outer skirts in sweat, was now absent and the fabric felt as though it had been plunged in ice water.
I forced my attention to the light, hoping its constant would steady me, only to realize it was held fast by someone up in the rafters who was not entirely sturdy themselves. I went on anyway.
“Any of you fellas planning to propose marriage to your sweetheart soon?” I yelled. My throat smarted and I swallowed to soothe it. Some whooped and a few called out, “Only to you, Calla!” I laughed and curtsied, pitching my outer skirts away from my pantaloons a bit so the crowd could see the American flag design on the underside of the simple white. Lydia Bambridge always created the most interesting costumes for my acts, so that both my show and my dress caused a spectacle. There was a roar of applause at the sight of the Stars and Stripes and several “will you marry mes” cut through the noise.
“When you do get around to asking that lucky girl for her hand, do remember what I’m about to tell you,” I started, leaning close to the crowd like I was telling a secret. “See, back in New York, a very patriotic friend of mine was considering marriage to a fine man. He was handsome, smart, kind—and he called her all the loveliest names: sweetheart, sugar, darling.” I paused and nearly stumbled as my body swelled with heat and vertigo. I was suddenly unable to recall the last thing I’d said.
“Well, what’s wrong with darling?” someone shouted, reminding me that I was in the middle of a joke. I grinned and walked slowly back toward the piano, bracing myself on the case of the opened baby grand when I reached it. Perhaps it was only my blood sugar plunging. I hadn’t had much to eat—a grapefruit at breakfast, a slice of buttered toast at lunch.
“Nothing at all is wrong with darling,” I said. I cleared my throat to stop the sting. “But when he proposed, he made a terrible mistake. Rather than her name, rather than angel or dear, he called my friend the worst thing you can call proud American stock like us. He called her hunny.”
Copyright © 2025 by Joy Callaway
A Novel of WWI
Sometimes heroism is found in dreams deferred.
Charlotte, NC. 1918. Broadway darling Calla Connolly had it all: a rising career on the stage and a loving fiancé, a fellow stage actor. But after his tragic death early in the war, Calla is touring the American training camps, hoping to convince General Pershing to let her tour the French front to cheer the men and honor her fiancé's memory. But her hopes are dashed when she contracts Spanish flu while performing at Camp Greene.
While convalescing, Calla inadvertently overhears a sensitive Army secret and is ordered to remain at Camp Greene for the duration of the war while her former mentor and rival steals her tour out from under her. Having no choice but to stay at the camp, she becomes the resident performer and forms attachments to several musician soldiers.
When she falls in love with the man responsible for trapping her at camp, the mission she's sworn to keep secret threatens the men she's come to care for. Calla is forced to decide what her dreams are worth—and if the future she never expected might only be possible if she lets those dreams go.
Women's Fiction Historical | Women's Fiction Southern [Harper Muse, On Sale: May 6, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9781400244331 / eISBN: 9781400244348]
Joy Callaway is an international bestselling author of historical fiction and southern contemporary romance. She formerly served as a marketing director for a wealth management company. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and Public Relations from Marshall University and an M.M.C. in Mass Communication from the University of South Carolina. She resides in Charlotte, NC with her husband, John, and her children.
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