The War Librarian

 by Addison Armstrong

This is another one of the books where the author combines a stories in the past and present and the stories connect at the end.  Why are so many authors doing this these days?  Why isn't one good story enough?

The story starts with a young woman whose grand mother has died.  She is working in a lost letter office trying to get letters that have not been delivered  back to their source.  I guess people may not have put return addresses on them.  She starts working on a letter and finds it is from a young man she grew up with and whom she likes very much.  He is writing from Europe to a New York debutante asking her to write him. It sounds like he hopes to marry her.  However the young woman know the debutante has recently married.  She is angry that the debutante did not have the guts/courtesy to write him back and tell him she is married  It is against the rules but the girl writes back to him as if she were the debutante.

Shortly after that she volunteers to go to France to work as a librarian in medical camps.  When she gets to France she is befriended by a young ambulance driver and wonder of wonders meets up with the soldier she wrote the letter to.  I can't remember if she tells him his girlfriend is married.

The other story is of a young man in the 70's who has been accepted into the U.S marine corps, the first class to accept women.  The women all go through terrible trials by the men and one man in particular takes a dislike to her and assaults her and sets her up for downfall.

The young woman and soldier become closer and eventually have sex.  While this is going on there is a campaign to not allow certain books about war, by germans, etc to be read.  If they show up in boxes of books donated the librarian she is supposed to destroy them.  The young woman reads a letter about a Librarian in the U.S. who is fired becasue he refuses to abide by these rules.  She and her soldier friend write a letter to the newspaper in the Librarian's city urging support for him.  In the meantime the girl has been hiding some forbidden books in her room.  She is discovered and sentenced for treason.  She is to be taken to a court in another city by the ambulance driver but the driver wants to get her to freedom. They change clothes for the drive.  Unfortunately their car is hit by a bomb and the ambulance driver is killed.  As the other young woman is dressed like the driver she takes her ID and eventually gets back to America.  She is pregnant.

In the end it turns out that the cadet's grandmother is the war librarian.

It was an okay story....