Content Warning: The section of the guide features depictions of attempted sexual assault and wartime trauma.

The novel’s protagonist and primary narrator, Jessie Carson, is based on the real-life librarian of the same name. During her time working for CARD in France, Carson “overcame the stagnant French bureaucracy, that refused to fund, or even acknowledge, the importance of libraries for children and the working class” (303). By bringing narrative voice to the character Kit, Skeslien Charles develops the broad outlines of Carson’s professional achievements to explore the imagined inner conflicts of a complex woman, family member, and friend.

When she arrives in France in 1918, Jessie is 40 years old, a shy “spinster” who enjoys the company of books more than people. Growing up, she was a shy girl with a big imagination, and fell in love with books after her father brought her to the New York Public Library. Though her mother worked to support her and her sister Mabel after their father died, she has always disapproved of Jessie’s literary interests and her decision to put her career as a librarian ahead of marriage, and the character feels her mother’s concern as an acute criticism.