DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE by Elizabeth Berg.

I'll be honest. I picked up this book based on its title (a line from a 1940's Johnny Mercer song) and its cover. I briefly skimmed the back and thought, this sounds good. I'm a sucker for 1940's war-time nostalgia (hello Swing Kids anyone?) and DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE definitely fit the bill, right down to the meat rationing, coffee coupons, pin curls and period slang.
The Heaney sisters, Louise, Kitty and Tish, are daughters of Irish immigrants living in Chicago during WWII. Doing their American duties for the war-effort, the girls regularly attend USO dances, knit socks and scarves, and write letters to the servicemen overseas. Louise writes to her fiance (a ring Kitty was commissioned with picking up and delivering after the boys left, Kitty to Julian, her longtime boyfriend and would-be fiance,if he would just propose, and young Tish to a myriad of men she meets at dances.
Kitty is no doubt the character with which most readers identify - as I'm sure Berg did intentionally. She is confident and headstrong but confused by the many emotions she feels writing her beau away at war, a task with which she continually struggles -grasping at topics to write about and discuss - but her ease with which she pens letters to another soldier she has met a dance. She takes the family-imposed war effort (writing, knitting and rationing) into her own hands when quits her desk job at an insurance agency to begin a Rosie the Riveter-type job at a bomber factory.
DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE takes the war with which the world is consumed, and causes it to play a supporting role in the book, as Kitty and her sisters confront numerous era-sensitve incidents.
Portions of the book are the letters that the girls receive back from their servicemen. Also a sucker for letters, (as some of you may know) I found these written pieces to be the most telling. Even though the letters were censored and read, as they were during wartime, readers can empathize and sympathize with the girls as the read each one outloud to her sisters. One can see them around the dining room table, pin curls in place with bobby pins, robes pulled tight around their nightgowns, excitedly opening letter after letter.
DREAM WHILE YOU ARE FEELING BLUE is almost a nostalgic chick-lit gives a sentimental twist to this time of modern warfare and e-mails rather than pen-to-paper correspondance.

DREAM WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BLUE by Johnny Mercer
Get in touch with that sundown fellow
As he tiptoes across the sand
He's got a million kinds of stardust
Pick your fav'rite brand, and

Dream, when you're feeling blue
Dream, that's the thing to do
Just watch the smoke rings rise in the air
You'll find your share of memories there

So dream when the day is through
Dream, and they might come true
Things never are as bad as they seem
So dream, dream, dream

instrumental

Dream when the day is through
Dream, and they might come true
Things never are as bad as they seem
So dream, dream, dream
Dream
So dream, dream, dream