Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade is a story that celebrates the power of books, courage, compassion, and community during The Great War.
Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles
Genre/Categories/Setting: Historical Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Books About Books, WWI, France and New York City
*This post contains Amazon affiliate links.
My Summary of Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade:
Thanks #NetGalley @AtriaBooks for a complimentary e ARC of #MissMorgansBookBrigade upon my request. All opinions are my own.
Millionaire and philanthropist Anne Morgan (daughter of JP Morgan) founded a group of international women (American Committee for Devastated France…also known as CARD) to help rebuild French communities during WWI. In 1918, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the organization in France and she implements innovative methods during her tenure. A dual timeline in 1987 introduces us to Wendy Peterson who stumbles across a reference to Jessie Carson in the archives of the New York Public Library and is consumed with learning more about her.
My Thoughts:
Dual Timelines
Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade is told in dual timelines (1918 and 1987). The historical time is especially engaging as I learned about the CARDs, the founders, and the book services to the French community during The Great War.
Characters
The main characters are Jessie “Kit” Carson (1918) and Wendy (1987). Anne Morgan is a background character in the WWI timeline. Jessie’s story is the most compelling for me for several reasons: I don’t know anything about Anne Morgan’s organization; I appreciate WWI versus WWII for a change; I adore reading about the power of books to change lives; I love a dynamic and spunky main character; I appreciate hearing the details about Jessie’s innovations involving the library and bookmobile. I’m not sure we need Wendy’s timeline. Although, there is some suspense for readers and for Wendy as we find out what happened to Jessie Carson. I love historical fiction for its role in telling untold stories.
Themes
A few thoughtful themes include resilience, survival, compassion, war trauma, the power of books, women supporting women, going above and beyond, and loss. Yes, there are small sides of romance to delight readers.
Content Consideration: tragedies of war, grief
Recommending Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade
I think fans of WWI historical fiction, books about books, and stories of real-life inspirational women will enjoy Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade. This might be an enjoyable and discussable book club book as well.
Related: You might also enjoy The Paris Library by the same author.
My Rating: 4 Stars
Meet the Author of Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, Janet Skeslien Charles
Janet Skeslien Charles grew up on the plains of Montana. She spent two years in Odessa, Ukraine, as a Soros Teaching Fellow. She taught English, French, and Creative writing for fifteen years, first in Ukraine, then in Montana, and finally in France.
‘Moonlight in Odessa’ is her first novel. It was chosen as a top ten debut novel by Publishers Weekly and as book of the month by National Geographic Traveler magazine.
QOTD:
Is this WWI histfic on your TBR or have you read it?
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I’ve heard great things about this book, Carol. I had wanted to download it from Netflix but was on a time crunch helping my parents. I have definitely added it to my TBR pile.
It was a good change of pace to read about WW1 🙌 also fun to learn something new!
Good review!
Thanks Lisa!
In general, I really like the dual timeline format for historical novels, but I often find that the past timeline is more interesting than the present one and can stand just fine on its own. So, I guess I enjoy the format IF it works well. If it doesn’t, the present timeline just feels superfluous and distracting instead of suspenseful and compelling.
Great review! This book is on my TBR list. Hopefully, I’ll get to it sometime this century. LOL
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
It’s interesting history! Enjoy!
Great review, Carol. I often enjoy the past storyline in a dual timeline story. I recently read a book set in WW1 and it was nice for a change. I enjoyed Janet Skeslien Charles’ last book and do hope to read this one when I get a chance. I also like when I learn something I don’t know about, so that is another reason I want to read this one.
I think you’ll enjoy it Carla!