The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuskes. William Morrow, 4 March 2025.
Brianna Labuskes has become one of my favorite historical fiction authors.
Her previous two historical novels, The Librarian of Burned Books (2023) and The Lost Book of Bonn (2024) each made my "best of the year" list.
The location of the most recent book moves from Europe to the USA.
The story follows the lives of three women in the 1900s, and takes place primarily in Montana, where, at the time, "copper was king".
Millie Lang grew up on a ranch in Texas, an orphan who was raised by her aunt and uncle. Desperate to get away from being treated as an unpaid servant, she ran away to seek her fortune, and ended up taking a job as an editor with the Federal Writers' Project, part of the Federal One Project. The FWP produced the American Guide series, travel guides for each state. After rescuing a colleague who was being sexually assulted (and punching the attacker in the nose), she's sent to Montana to work on that guidebook as well as to get her out of the line of fire.Alice Monroe is the daughter of the wealthy Clark Monroe, an influential businessman in Missoula. Having had health issues as a child, she is over-protected by her widowed father, but has managed to get a job at the local library. Her father does allow her to deliver library books to people at nearby mining camps, but she must be accompanied by her Clark's right-hand-man, Murdoch "Mac" MacTavish. Alice is frustrated that the number of camps she can visit is so limited, and vows to find a way to go further afield.
We meet Colette Durand in 1914, when she's 11 years old. Her father, Claude, works for the Anaconda Mining Company in Hell Raisin' Gulch. Although he supports himself and his daughter by working as a miner, Claude is able to recite most of Shakespeare's plays from memory. His love of literature and storytelling is passed on to Collette, who runs freely around the tiny town.
In 1924, when Alice comes up with the idea of creating a library in a boxcar on the train that travels the network of railways that serve the logging and mining camps, the paths of the three women finally begin to intersect.
The themes of this story are very pertinent to the events unfolding in the United States today, and it is heartening to see that the "Robber Barons" did not prevail.
This book will definitely be on my 2025 "best" list!
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