The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin

The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin

Published by Hanover Square Press ISBN 9781335426918

Trade paperback, $16.99, 320 pages

Madeline Martin's terrific novel The Last Bookshop in London (my review here) told the story of a young woman who worked in a London bookshop during the Blitz of WWII. It was a fresh take on the popular WWII novels, and as someone who works in a bookstore, I enjoyed it.

Her new novel, The Librarian Spy, is also a unique WWII story. Martin sets this story in two cities- Lyon, France and Lisbon, Portugal. I can't recall reading a novel set in Lisbon, and didn't know anything about Portugal's role as a neutral country during WWII. I do now.

Ava Harper is a librarian working in the rare books room in the Library of Congress. She is recruited to help the United States war effort and is sent to Lisbon where she is tasked with purchasing magazines and newspapers from Germany, France, and elsewhere and microfilming them to send back to Washington DC to be studied by the War Department for intelligence that will help the war effort.

Elaine lives in Lyon, which is under the control of the Nazis and the Vichy government. When her husband  disappears, Elaine is recruited by his friend to work undercover with the French Resistance. Elaine works with other women hiding and passing out undercover newspapers to others in the Resistance. Eventually she ends up working on the printing press that creates the newspapers.

The contrast between Ava's life in Lisbon and Elaine's in Lyon is stark. Ava is enjoying tasty Portuguese pastries like pastéis de nata and living in a small but comfortable apartment while Elaine is constantly hungry and moving from one cramped safehouse to another trying to avoid being captured by the cruel Nazis who would torture her for information. 

Ava meets some British librarians, and catches the eye of one in particular, James. James takes Ava to fancy dinner parties, telling her it would aid the war effort, while Elaine anxiously searches for word about the whereabouts of her husband. Was he is prison, sent to a work camp, or dead?

There is a connection between Ava and Elaine that becomes apparent in the second half of the book as that revolves around a secret message that gets decoded and helps a woman escape.

At first I was more intrigued by Ava's story because I didn't know much about Lisbon (and I admire librarians, they are superheroes), but as the story progressed, Elaine's story captured me as well. Lisbon housed many refugees from the Nazi's, and was a point of departure for many who fled to the United States. The parallels to the refugees today fleeing war in Afghanistan and the Ukraine are significant.

Madeline Martin doesn't shy away from the horrors of the Nazis cruelties, and it can often hard, but yet important, to read. As a world we cannot keep allowing this atrocities to happen. It put me in mind of Jessica Shattuck's novel The Women in the Castle and Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale from a few years ago.

As Eleanor Roosevelt said "A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong it is until it's in hot water." Ava and Elaine personify that quite well in Madeline Martin's powerful novel The Librarian Spy.  I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Harlequin Books for putting me on their Summer 2022 Historical Fiction Blog Tour.