The Librarian of Burned Books, page 1
Dedication
To librarians, the guardians of books
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
About the Book
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
New York City
November 1943
The telegram regretfully informing Vivian Childs that her husband had died in battle arrived before his last letter.
When Viv saw the familiar scrawl on an envelope two weeks after that baby-faced sergeant had knocked on the door, her knees gave out. She hit the marble floor of the entryway with a sharp crack that she distantly knew should hurt but didn’t.
Edward.
For one desperate second, Viv thought that terrible telegram must have been a mistake.
But no, that couldn’t be. This was a ghost, the words of a dead man who didn’t yet realize his fate.
Viv’s heart beat painfully against her wrists, her throat, and time passed, the ticking of the grandfather clock matching the throbbing at her temples. The comforting numbness that had protected her for the past two weeks had lifted and the pain she’d been holding at bay rushed in to every hollow space in her body.
It was almost a relief when the knob of her wrist connected with the edge of the table as she groped for the letter above her. That kind of pain she understood.
She stared at her name on the envelope, touching it and then his gently before slipping her nail underneath one corner.
My Viv,
I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your letters. Please keep them—and updates about your amusing feud with Mrs. Croft and her smug poodle—coming. All the men are as invested in the outcome of the blue-dye incident as I am.
You never think of war as dull, and yet there is nothing but monotony and sand and then moments of terror that leave you shaking for the long hours until all that wears off and what’s left is monotony once more. Your stories keep us entertained more than you can know.
On that front, we may have more relief coming, thank goodness. The army has launched an ingenious initiative wherein they ship us poor, bored boys small, portable books to keep us entertained and distracted from all the bombs that are landing inches from our heads.
Forgive my dryness. But truly, the books have been a godsend to us. I managed to nab a copy of Oliver Twist, and it makes me think of Hale. My brother is too proud to have ever accepted what he would have thought of as charity from me, but I do wish I had figured out a way to help him more when we were children. Thinking of him struggling when I had so much . . . well, the guilt makes it harder to sleep, doesn’t it? War is good at that—making you remember everything you wish you’d done differently.
I know this letter pales in comparison to your lively ones, but please don’t punish me for my lack of stories by withholding your own. Give Mother my love.
Yours,
Edward
Viv ignored Edward’s mention of his brother Hale as much as she ever could. A flash of hot summer nights, sticky cotton-candy lips, a teasing smile, and calloused hands came and went, a lightning strike in the dark night of her grief.
Why think about something she could never have?
Instead, she reread the letter, and for the first time in two weeks let herself picture Edward. Every time she had tried before, she had only been able to see a bruised and broken body, ripped flesh and blood, charred earth and flames. Now, she imagined him in front of a fire, but a gentle one, at night, surrounded by his brothers-in-arms. He cradled a book in his hands, calling out favorite passages to the others, pausing to listen as they did the same.
She clung to that image, basking in its comforting warmth.
After the fourth time through, Viv lifted a hand to her face and felt the corners of the first smile she’d allowed herself since Edward had died.
Chapter 1
New York City
May 1944
Viv pressed her spine against the brick wall of the alley as she split her attention between the back door of the ritziest steakhouse in Manhattan and the curious rat that was getting bolder by the second.
In Viv’s mind, this escapade had played out with less garbage and more intrigue and she was starting to wonder if her plan was fundamentally flawed. As she pondered the possibility of retreat, the dishwasher she’d been waiting to bribe finally appeared. Her head went a little light in equal parts excitement and terror as she slipped the boy the bill she’d folded up just so.
The stench of days-old cabbage receded once she stepped into the restaurant’s kitchen. Her confidence returning, Viv donned the femme fatale persona she’d been channeling all morning in preparation for this wild scheme. She’d even deliberately dressed the part, having paired her black skirt with matching garters and precious stockings with seams that hugged the backs of her calves. She’d pinned her hair into perfect victory rolls she usually didn’t have the time to bother with, and she’d carefully slicked on a cherry lip that should have clashed with the red tones in her blond hair but never seemed to.
She wound her way past stoves that belched smoke and men who belched curses, the remnants of both curling around her so that she might as well have been walking through the docks on a foggy morning after having just killed a lover. Her hips swayed at the thought, her shoulders straightening.
It mattered, this feeling. It bolstered her resolve, helped compensate for her trembling hands.
Because Viv would have only one shot at this, and she could not mess it up.
Senator Robert Taft was headed back to Washington, DC, in the morning, and he didn’t have a strong track record of answering her letters. This confrontation had to happen in person and it had to be today.
When she stepped out into the steakhouse’s dining room, Viv spotted Taft easily. Before she’d met him months earlier, she’d pictured him as a small man, with a frame that curled in on itself. Pictured mean eyes and pinched features. A weak jaw. The personification of his petty personality.
In reality, he towered over his lunch companions, the candlelight glinting off his bald head. He took up space in that way powerful men seemed naturally able to, his arm spread along the back of the circular booth.
Viv had been right about the jaw, though.
And the personality.
A guard stopped Viv before she got to the group, melting out of the curtains beside the booth, a dangerous shadow she should have anticipated. She had, really. She’d just thought he would have been stationed by the entrance and directed to keep her out.
After all, Viv had been nothing but a thorn in Taft’s side for the past six months. He wanted to avoid this conversation as much as she wanted it to happen. Hence the kitchen and the dishwasher and the bribe.
“Senator, if I could have a moment of your time,” she called out, going for broke.
The chatter at the table died as everyone tensed. It was a strange moment in history to be a politician, when you were sending the nation’s boys to their death while enjoying steak and whiskey lunches on the taxpayers’ tab.
Taft’s fingers drummed an uneven beat on the rich leather beneath his hand, likely trying to figure out how big of a scene she would make. He wasn’t the only diner in the restaurant, after all, and he was nothing if not aware of his image.
Viv even noticed out of the corner of her eye a New York Post reporter whom she’d worked with before. As the publicity director for the Council on Books in Wartime, Viv had become friendly with a good number of journalists in the city. The man raised his glass and his brows in a salute, looking far too amused not to already be plotting to include an item about this encounter in the anonymous gossip pages.
The gesture must have caught Taft’s attention because his lips flattened into a tight line as he stared at the reporter. Then Taft waved for Viv to take a seat, the other men shuffling out so that Viv was left sliding in far closer to him than she would have liked.
“Mrs. Childs,” Taft said on an exhale as if she were a naughty child, called in front of the school principal. “What can I help you with?”
Viv nearly laughed at that. As if he didn’t know why she was here.
Without answering, Viv reached into her purse and pulled out the slim books that were at the heart of her crusade against this man. She tossed one on the table in front of him.
“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Viv said, keeping her eyes locked to his. She wondered if he had ever even seen an Armed Services Edition. She sent him copies of the paperbacks in the mail, but his secretary—the same one who’d clued her in to this lunch—had let her know that any messages from Viv or the council got immediately repurposed as scrap paper. There was a ration on, or else they probably would have ended up in the fire. She threw down the second one. “Grapes of Wrath.”
“Mrs. Childs, I don’t know what you think this stunt is accomplishing, but let me assure you—”
She was on a roll, though. “Candide. Yankee from Olympus. The Call of the Wild.”
With each title, she slammed one of the green books down on the table between them.
“All of those books will be banned from our Armed Services Editions program under your new censorship policy,” Viv said, sitting back and folding her arms to try to contain the bright, sharp anger coursing through her. “Shall I keep going? There are plenty.”
“It’s not a censorship policy, Mrs. Childs,” Taft said in that supremely rational tone that had her clenching her teeth. “All I’m requiring is that your little council doesn’t use taxpayer money to send to our troops books that are lightly veiled political propaganda.” He slipped a toothpick between thin lips and rolled it from corner to corner. “There are hundreds of well-written, enjoyable books out there that don’t touch on politics. Please feel free to include any number of them in your ASE program.”
“The language is too broad.” Viv prayed he didn’t notice the slight tremor in her voice. Part of her realized she’d let this all become too personal, as if the ASEs and Edward’s final letter were entwined for her now. But she refused to let Taft dismiss her as a hysterical woman, as just another grieving war widow in a country full of them. “If you truly drafted the legislation in good faith, the wording should be changed. Right now, all the ban is doing is crippling our ASE initiative.”
They both knew acting in good faith had never been important to him. His main goal had always been to hurt the council without looking like he was hurting the council.
But she had to try.
“This issue has been debated by the United States Congress and has been decided. It’s law now, girlie,” he said, and she heard you lost in the spaces between his words. “You think you know better than the Senate?”
Viv wanted to point out that he’d politically threatened any lawmaker who had tried to stand up to him on the issue. That argument wouldn’t get her anywhere—he was clearly proud of his underhanded tactics.
“The language is too broad,” she repeated, trying to remember the script she’d practiced so many times last night, terrified her tongue would tie in this moment. She waved to the books she’d brought. “Look me in the eye and tell me any of these actually constitute propaganda.” When he didn’t say anything, she pushed. “Under your policy, the army will have to ban its own instruction manual because it has a picture of President Roosevelt in it. How is that helping anyone?”
“The language has to be broad or people will find loopholes,” Taft countered. “Some innocuous books might get caught up in the wider net, but that’s the price we have to pay. If you knew anything about legislation or lawmaking you would know that. But you don’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“It’s not just these examples,” Viv said, desperate. “It’s most of our list.”
“Well, then you see why my amendment was needed,” Taft said, smiling so broadly that his eyes crinkled. She imagined him at a campaign stop and wondered if people actually bought this image. “Clearly your council required more guidance on which novels are appropriate for our soldiers to read.”
Viv blinked at him. “The soldiers who are dying for us. They need to be told what to read?”
Seeming to sense he’d misstepped, Taft tried to buy himself time by picking up his napkin and dabbing at his chin. “Well, regardless, I’m protecting taxpayers who don’t want to have their money spent on propaganda approved by a dictator looking to secure his fourth term.”
That’s where all of this had started, after all. Taft had a deep and abiding hatred of President Roosevelt, and it wasn’t exactly secret. But Roosevelt was popular enough that Taft had to be crafty when he attacked the man. And Roosevelt was a vocal supporter of both the Council on Books in Wartime and its wildly successful initiative that every month shipped millions of paperback novels to the boys serving overseas. The ASE program had become so popular that Taft knew Roosevelt would use it as a campaign talking point come the fall. With his censorship policy essentially banning ninety percent of the books the council wanted to send to soldiers, Taft was handcuffing the initiative to the point of irrelevancy.
“Yes, I can tell you care about budgets,” Viv said, her words dripping with ice as she glanced around at the remains of a meal that could have funded the council for a month.
Taft lashed out, his fingertips digging into the bones of her wrist. There would be bruises there tomorrow.
“I’ve been patient with your little tantrum here, young lady,” Taft said, pressing her back into the booth with his bulk. “But I’ll remind you, you are talking to a senator of the United States of America.”
Viv refused to back down now. “Can you deny it? That this is nothing more than an attempt to destroy the council and hurt Roosevelt in the process?”
“I don’t have to deny anything to you,” Taft said, viciously spitting out the word you. She was less than a fly to be swatted away, she was nothing.
And maybe Viv—a woman who until six months ago had no more experience with life than throwing charity luncheons to help sell war bonds to her rich friends—was nothing in the grand scheme of things, in this war, in politics.
But in that moment, with Taft looming over her, believing without any doubt that he could intimidate her just like he intimidated everyone around him with bluster and violence, she decided this was her hill to die on.
It might be a small hill, but it was hers.
“The boys carry these books into battle,” she said as softly as possible so that it would land that much harder. She didn’t try to break away from his grasp. Maybe he would feel the steady thrum of her pulse, the surety of her conviction. “A man sent me a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer last week that still had blood on it. He meant it as a thank-you. His buddy had a good laugh the night before he died because of that book.”
She let that sit for a minute before continuing, “A book he wouldn’t have had if your censorship policy had been in place just a few months earlier.”
If she hadn’t been watching closely, she wouldn’t have noticed Taft’s throat bob, a hard swallow, and for one achingly painful moment she thought she might have gotten through to him. Then he shifted back, reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out a few bills.
He tossed them on top of the ASEs she’d brought to throw in his face. “Go buy yourself something nice, sweetheart. And leave the important issues to the men.”
Then he stood, signaled to his cronies, who had been hovering in the wings, and left without a single backward glance.
Chapter 2
Berlin
December 1932
The fairy lights stretching between booths at the winter market blurred into stars as the cold tickled Althea James’s eyes. Laughter coiled around her, tugging her deeper into the noise and bustle that filled an otherwise quiet square a few blocks from the much busier Potsdamer Platz.
The market hummed with life and celebration, despite everything Althea had heard about the economic uncertainty that continued to plague Germany long after the Great War had ended. Hunchbacked grandmas haggled over trinkets and roasted nuts with the sellers, everyone tucking joy behind serious expressions so that they wouldn’t be swindled. Children giggled and darted through the crowd, couples strolled arm in arm, somewhere in the near distance a band played rousing songs while the voices of a roving chorus weaved themselves into the air to make it pulse and sparkle.
