Hollywood celebrity entertains troops during World War I: The Star of Camp Greene by Joy Callaway

The Star of Camp Greene by Joy Callaway (Harper Muse, May 2025) presents the story of Calla Connolly, a famous singer and actress who entertains United States troops both stateside and at the front during World War I.

Joy Callaway is an international bestselling author of historical fiction and Southern contemporary romance. She said she drew inspiration for Calla Connolly after reading newspaper archives about Elsie Janis, whom she described as: “a renowned Broadway star who was over on a tour in London and engaged to a British stage actor when the war broke out. Her fiancé was quickly called to war and perished. Elsie returned to America and, wanting to do something to help the cause and honor her fiancé, approached General Pershing about performing at the front lines in order to lift the spirits of the men about to face the unthinkable. General Pershing declined at first, suggesting she perform at the stateside army camps as a sort of trial run. Elsie would succeed in her tour and make it to the front, all while funding her own shows and travel. Later, her performances sparked the idea to form the USO during World War II.”

Callaway added: “Although my main character, Calla, is different from Elsie in many ways, the two women share the same backstory.”

The book’s heroine contracts Spanish flu while she is entertaining troops at Camp Greene National Guard Training Camp in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Drilling recruits at Camp Greene, Charlotte, N.C during World War I.

Callaway noted that “there are striking similarities between what we experienced with COVID-19 and [what they experienced with] the Spanish flu especially when it comes to protocol. Masks, keeping a distance of six feet, and city-wide shutdowns were all implemented during the Spanish flu outbreak.”

The procedures were so similar that during the editorial process of her book, Callaway was asked if the protocols she described were, in fact, true to the time or adopted from our more modern experience with a pandemic.

“The key difference between COVID-19 and Spanish flu, at least from my research,” Callaway stated, “was that Spanish flu initially tended to strike the young at terrifying rates. I actually have a letter to this point from the president of Marshall University to my great-grandfather who was hoping to enroll when the pandemic subsided. Additionally, there was no vaccine available either as vaccines weren’t developed for the flu yet and understanding of viruses wasn’t as concrete. Despite the few differences, I think readers will understand the magnitude of the Spanish flu pandemic because of what we lived through with COVID-19.”

The author based her book in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“I’m from Charlotte and currently live in Charlotte,” Callaway said, “so I had the opportunity to visit what would have been Camp Greene many times while I was writing the novel. There’s not much left of Camp Greene, but at one point it encompassed 8,000 acres, stretching from what is now uptown Charlotte to Gaston County, and housed nearly 60,000 soldiers – doubling the population of Charlotte at the time – between 1917 and 1919.”

→ Read the entire article on The Historical Novel Society website.
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