I strongly recommend this book, Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles. It’s the story of a group of American woman, led by Anne Morgan (daughter of J.P. Morgan) and her life partner, Anne Murray Dike, who went to war-torn northeastern France before the end of World War I to help provide healthcare, nutrition, basic necessities, and other services to people who lived in an area so destroyed by war that some of the villages were completely annihilated.
Most of the volunteers who went with them were heiresses and rich debutantes who had to pay their own expenses. This novel, however, focuses on Jessie “Kit” Carson, a middle-class children’s librarian from the New York Public Library. Jessie believed with all her heart that children who had lost everything and suffered unspeakable terror and trauma needed the power of story to reignite their hopes and dreams. She established a lending library and instituted the practice of mobile libraries, which drove to more than 100 villages to loan books and offer a weekly story hour. Before her innovations, France did not allow children in libraries nor did libraries have open stacks patrons could browse.
It’s a heartwarming story that does not at all shy away from the terrible consequences of war. I can’t recommend it highly enough to history lovers and book lovers alike.
Ruth Hull Chatlien 