(Book for review courtesy of NetGalley)
Atria Books
War! What is it good for? Bringing out the best in women, if Janet Skeslien Charles' novel Miss Morgan's Book Brigade has anything to say. Women are left to do everything else when men are planning battles and fighting during wartime. Miss Morgan's Book Brigade tells the story of a troop of American women in France helping women left behind. Some women are widowed and alone, others have farms around and families to provide for. These women and children are in need of food and a variety of support.
Anne Morgan (daughter of famed Gilded Age financier J. P. Morgan) and her lady companion Anne Murray Dike put out a siren call for women from all backgrounds and skill levels to journey to France and offer assistance to those in need. One such woman is Jessie "Kitt" Carson, a librarian charges with rebuilding a library and offering bookmobile andl storytime services. Known as CARDS - Le Comite Americain pour les Regions Devastees de France (the American Committee for Devistated Regions of France.)
Jessie finds friendship and romance among the ruined countryside,
for devastated regions of France), while helping women regain their dignity.
The novel also tells the story of librarian / aspiring writer Wendy Peterson, who, in 1987, finds the CARDS' story in dusty New York Public Library boxes. Wendy's story is less compelling then Jessie's, but Wendy's function was to bring the CARDS' story public. Charles' writing puts the reader right on the battlefield amongst the devastation. To know the CARDS and Jessie Carson were real women makes the story all the more intimate and satisfying. Miss Morgan's Book Brigade is an important story about everyday bravery, the power of women working together, and the importance of books.
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