Take a trip back in time to spend the first Thanksgiving of World War II with the Coleman family and the return home to Pittsburgh of the two older sons-Jonathan and Joseph-for a brief holiday furlough in the middle of their Army Air Forces training...and what all family members expect will be their last Thanksgiving at home for a long while. Charlene Coleman, now seventeen years old, has secret dreams of fame after being told by none other than the star of Broadway's Pal Joey-Pittsburgh native Gene Kelly-that she has a great deal of talent and should be out selling War Bonds across the country.

For Jonathan, this Thanksgiving furlough presents a serious predicament: what he should do when he encounters Francine Donner, his would-be fiancé. Jonathan had just started proposing to her the previous Christmas Eve when Francine blurted out a shameful secret that halted the proposal...but what will happen eleven months later when Jonathan and Francine come together again?

Irene Coleman is determined to make this Thanksgiving as joyous as possible for everyone in her family who will gather around her table and share the holiday festivities, despite the wartime circumstances and how difficult a year 1942 has been on the war front and also the home front.

Halfway across the world their cousin Marty, who has already been to war, is spending his Thanksgiving with his sea-mates on the USS Augusta, thinking about and missing his family back home.

THANKSGIVING, 1942 - the just-published first of three sequels to THE FIRST CHRISTMAS OF THE WAR - follows Jonathan, Joseph, Charlene, Irene and her husband Gerald, and the other members of the Coleman family during the days leading up to the first Thanksgiving of the war.
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Trivia: Look for Joey DeMarco, the "off-pages" husband in Alan Simon's historical novel UNFINISHED BUSINESS, with a small role in THANKSGIVING, 1942 as a former high school buddy and football teammate of Jonathan and Joseph Coleman.

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