To quote a recent New York Times article: "It does seem that Americans now pine for WWll as if it’s an Eden from which we’ve been exiled. People feel as if the memory of the war is slipping away, with only a dwindling number of people still able to recall it firsthand."

4-F Blues helps satisfy the longing for a return to that era. The time is October, 1942. Audiences still believe in movie magic-- technicolor musicals, daffy comedies, morale-boosting films that depict the Allies winning battle after battle.

But what the public sees onscreen isn’t necessarily what occurs off. For one thing, there are people who would like to see the whole structure of the motion picture business collapse--and they will go to any lengths to see that this does happen, whether it be by exposing the scandalous behavior of certain stars...or even killing them.

October, 1942 is a time when most young men (The Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw so aptly named it) are anxious to fight the enemy. Getting a medical deferment (4-F) is a traumatic experience for many of those rejected for service. The main character of this novel, Tom Driscoll, happens to be one of those young men, rejected because of a heart murmur. Ironically, Tom is a stuntman who risks his life on a daily basis doing what Hollywood’s so-called he men are too squeamish to do. Namely, their own stunts. In the service, his skills would be greatly valuable, but he can’t get past the medics.

Tom, six-foot-two and strong, is often mistaken as a draft-dodger, thus becoming the target for insulting remarks and retorts. But through a series of events, he finds himself being of service to his country in a way he never expected.

4-F Blues is a page-turner, taking us into the studios, into wartime Hollywood, and into the lives of the stars, the main female character fitting the Betty Grable mold. It’s a comedy/mystery that delves into other issues of the day--did Washington set up Pearl Harbor as a place to be attacked so as to get into the war? Did we abandon our troops on Corregidor?

Most important, it’s a sentimental journey to a Hollywood long gone.