Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade

The author of The Paris Library returns with a brilliant novel based on real-life American heroines working near the front in wartorn France

Under what was left of the roof of the bombed-out cottage, a girl with pigtails perched on a pile of rubble, hunched over a book...

1917 France: Heiress Anne Morgan founds the American Committee for Devastated France in order to help Frenchwomen who have lost their livelihoods, homes, and husbands to enemy fire. As Morgan’s crew rebuild communities, provide medical care, and feed orphans, French civilians of all ages have one request – books. In the debris of war, stories are the only escape. Morgan hires Jessie “Kit” Carson of the New York Public Library to establish something that the French have never seen: children’s libraries. Of modest means, Jessie Carson fears she won’t connect with Morgan and her ilk, but feels she must help the children traumatized by war.

1987 New York: While working in the NYPL archives, aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across an account of the deadly bombardment of French villages and the American women who risked their lives to evacuate civilians. She becomes consumed with learning about Carson’s fate.

Based on the extraordinary, little-known history of the American women who received the Croix de Guerre medal for courage under fire, Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, the power of literature, and, ultimately, the courage it takes to make a change.

In the UK & Commonwealth countries, the title of the book is The Librarians of Rue de Picardie.

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