Pete’s Pick
April 2024
The Librarian of Burned Books: A Novel
Brianna Labuskes
Historical Fiction
William Morrow Publishing, February 21, 2023
Introduction
This novel is about the role that books have played in politics, particularly world politics, as well as the incredible historical significance that efforts to ban books from libraries and bookstores has played in world history and is now playing out in our own history here in the United States of America in the 21st century.
Author
Brianna Labuskes is a Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of psychological thrillers and historical fiction. She was born in Harrisburg, PA, grew up in Pennsylvania, and graduated from Penn State Unversity with a degree in journalism. For several years, she was a journalist for national new organizations covering politics and policy. She lived in Washington, DC for many years and now calls Asheville, NC home.
Story
This story opens in late 1943 with one of the main characters, Vivian Childs, receiving a telegram that her husband had been killed in action during World War II. It immediately moves to a scene in May 1944 where Viv is crashing a luncheon in NYC being hosted by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Viv is working for the Council on Books in Wartime, which distributed paperback books to American servicemen through a program called American Service Editions. The were deliberately designed to be a size that fit into the breast pockets of the uniforms worn by American servicemen and were intended to give them something to read in their downtime from whatever their wartime mission was. Senator Taft had drafted an amendment to the Soldiers Voting Act of 1944 which had been passed by Congress and which would ban about 90 percent of the books the Council on Books in Wartime wanted to send out as ASEs. This included books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Grapes of Wrath. Viv’s goal was to raise public awareness of the censoring Senator Taft’s amendment permitted and cause an outcry that would cause the amendment to be overturned in Congress.
The story next moves on to Berlin in 1933 and introduces us to three women who become central characters as the story unfolds. Althea James is a young woman author from the coast of Maine who has recently written a best-selling novel. Deveraux Charles (Dev) is an upcoming American actress, movie director, and play writer. Althea and Dev are guests of the German government under Joseph Goebble’s Cultural Ministry program to acquaint American talent with Germany during a six-month internship. Hannah Brecht is a German Jewish woman living in Berlin during this time. The story unfolds as Adolph Hitler comes to power as the Chancellor of Germany and begins his Third Reich initiative. The story next moves to Paris in 1936 as the French people are becoming concerned about Hitler’s regime in Germany and the potential for war to occur. Hannah is the main character we follow in Paris as she works in the Library of Banned Books, a library built to house the books that were burned in Berlin in May 1933 during the incredible book-burning saga. The purpose of the library is to preserve the sanctity of these books that had been banned for political purposes.
The novel takes us back and forth between 1944 when Viv is waging a fight for have Senator Tafts’s amendment of the Soldier Voting Act of 1944 overturned so that books are not banned from the ASE program just because they represent views that conservatives find offensive, 1933 when Althea, Dev, and Hannah are in Berlin during the initial days of Hitler’s regime building and the book banning being carried out there, and 1936 when Hannah is in Paris working at the Library of Burned Books and is experiencing the rising apprehension of the French people to what is happening in the world with Hitler’s growth in power and his desire to take control of Europe.
A lot of the story line is about the prevalence of a pretty active gay culture in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. It is contrasted with the growth of a German political regime which seeks to weed out everything that would detract from the great Aryan mindset and the tension in all of society about activities and pastimes which are not appropriate. The focus in America in the 1940s is on trying to control what books are appropriate for distributing to American servicemen through the ASE program and who gets to decide what is appropriate. The tension brings us very much into today’s environment of the early 21st century as we are again fighting a battle over who controls what types of books are available in our school and public libraries and what sort of behaviors are portrayed in the books which school boards and township councils seek to remove from our libraries and classrooms.
Evaluation
I found myself pretty caught up in the broad story line that people in positions of power feel they need to control the kinds of books and reading material that are available to students and the public in order to control they kinds of things they think about. That’s what censorship is about, right? Someone in authority gets to decide what is appropriate to read or watch. I confess I was unaware of the 1940s effort by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio to control the kind of reading material made available to American servicemembers during WWII through the ASE program. In fact, I guess I wasn’t really aware of the ASE program until I read this book. It certainly hit home given the current situation we are dealing with even now in Hunterdon County as the North Hunterdon High and Voorhees High School Board deals with an effort to ban certain types of reading material from the schools’ libraries.
I learned a lot reading this book and am now on edge as I watch what is happening in my own community.