Review: Good Premise
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 2, 2012
The author started with known historical facts: Mary Pickersgill sewed the Star Spangled Banner with her daughter and servants.  Mrs. Louisa Armistead ended up in possession of the flag, and gave away pieces of it to those she thought deserving of it.  One of the 15 stars is missing.  This is the story of what happened to the fifteenth star, including the creation of a backstory for one of the servants.  Some things are implausible, such as Grace Wisher, the escaped slave, becoming friends with Mrs. Armistead, but I was willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story.  I had a really hard time, however, with the fact that the author periodically forgot that this novel is written in third person, past tense, and changed to writing in present tense, often within the same paragraph.  There were also numerous word usage errors, such as "accept" for "except".  It's too bad, because I liked the basics of what she did, and would have liked to rate this book higher.  Lisa, hire a proof reader, even if it's your mother, to help you with these types of issues, because you do have a gift for story telling.Edited to add:  Lisa notified me that she had updated this book to correct typeset and syntax errors, and, upon rereading, I found the book much improved.  I still had to suspend disbelief regarding the friendship between Mrs. Armistead and Grace Wisher, but it is a good story.