Miss Morgan's Book Brigade
Fiction
Simon and Schuster
April 30, 2024
Advance reader copy
336
Free from publisher
1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen—children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.
1987: When NYPL librarian and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing reference to Jessie Carson in the archives, she becomes consumed with learning her fate. In her obsessive research, she discovers that she and the elusive librarian have more in common than their work at New York’s famed library, but she has no idea their paths will converge in surprising ways across time.
My review:
This book could not have come up in my reading plans at a better time. I was literally in Paris as I was reading about the women who helped the French mothers and children during the First World War. As is most often the case when I read historical fiction, I come across something that I had no prior knowledge of. In the case of this book, it was a group called the CARDS (American Committee for Devastated France). Headed up by Miss Morgan (daughter of J. P. Morgan), the book focuses mainly on a young woman named Jessie Carson, who creates a roving library to get books into the hands of the children of the war, most of whom have lost their homes, schools, and all their possessions. While Jessie works tirelessly to not only read to the children, she grows close to the other women in their group, who all have a part to play in the assistance effort. While there is a fair amount of sorrow regarding the awful war conditions, the book also offers hope and a whole lot of caring for the people left behind from the fighting. Told in two timelines, I definitely gravitated more to Jessie's story, but I understand how the more current timeline was important to the overall storytelling. While I did appreciate the small romance section for Jessie, I found the one for Wendy to be not as believable, and didn't feel it added much to the plot. Lots of great characters in this one other than Jessie, my favorite of course had to be Marcelle, the little French girl who grows up to be a CARD.
An informative look at an aspect of WWI not much has been written about. Be sure to read the author's note, which expands on each of the women and what became of them after their service. This one is a win for historical fiction fans, or those who love books about books!
