60 pages • 2 hours read
Janet Skeslien CharlesMiss Morgan's Book Brigade
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
Kit narrates from Senlis, France in May 1918. Two months after the evacuation from Blérancourt, Kit and the Cards work in a makeshift army hospital. They care for soldiers who are wounded or have been injured in mustard gas attacks. Overwhelmed by their suffering, Kit retreats to her books, thinking that “[a]s long as I could return to the library of my mind, I felt I could face whatever came” (194). Kit is encouraged when she receives a letter from Sidonie in the Loire Valley, marveling that people there have functioning markets and libraries, that they talk about flowers instead of barbed wire.
Kit and Cookie get to know each other, and Kit asks Cookie why she always stayed in the kitchen instead of joining the rest of the Cards at mealtime. Cookie replies that she was respecting the “natural order” because she was not an heiress, and Kit asks her to promise to join them when they return to headquarters.
Kit reads to the men for an hour a day. At first she is surprised when the men call her “sister,” thinking they’ve mistaken her for a nun, but then likes the connection it implies, as though each of the men is a brother to her. During one of their reading hours, Lewis arrives unexpectedly, saying she’s been given four days off and she wanted to check on everyone. However, she later admits that she’s come to tell Kit that Tom was killed at the front. Tom’s last words were about Kit, and he sent a book for her—My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin. Kit is surprised to discover Miles Franklin was a woman, and Tom has written notes to her in the margin, calling Kit brave.
Kit mourns for Tom through the summer. A soldier arrives carrying a copy of The Adventures of Kit Carson, which she reflects is a “heavenly hello” from Tom. She realizes she must continue her work.
Chapter 20 Summary
Wendy narrates from New York in March 1987. On a date with Roberto, Wendy reveals that she’s found mention of Jessie Carson in Mary Breckenridge’s book, and that her nickname was Kit. Both talk about leaving the NYPL, and Roberto assures her they’ll still see each other. They decide to get their dinner to-go and bring it back to Wendy’s apartment. They kiss and lie down together, but when her leg feels trapped under Roberto’s, she relives the attack in her dorm room and freezes. Roberto asks if she wants to talk about it, then says they can take things slow when she doesn’t. They fall asleep in each other’s arms.
Wendy wakes before Roberto and begins reading Wide Neighborhood. A paper falls out with news printed from France: Anne Murray Dike and Anne Morgan “announce the tragic death of” a name that is cut off (209).
Chapter 21 Summary
Kit narrates from Northern France from August to October 1918. The Cards receive word from Anne Morgan that it’s time to return to Blérancourt. As they approach, all is silent. Though the German army has looted everything, Cards quickly get to work restocking the mercantile. Before heading to headquarters, Kit asks Cookie and Lewis to come with her to Madame Petit’s so she can fish her belongings out of the stream; with their help, Kit finds the bag and leaves it on Madame’s kitchen table.
Kit is relieved there’s no additional damage to the library. Everyone has returned, including Sidonie, who says she wants to be a librarian. As they celebrate, Kit urges Cookie to come out of the kitchen and join them. After resisting, she does.
As life is beginning to return to normal, many people begin falling ill. Breckie tells them it’s influenza, which has already ravaged the US and the rest of Europe. Breckie urges a quarantine as more and more people come to the infirmary, telling Lewis to close the mercantile; she insists people need provisions. After Lewis gets sick, the Annes close the mercantile and cancel gatherings. Other Cards have a variety of responses and cures, from a bowl of soup to dog dewormer. Though Lewis recovers, Cookie dies holding Breckie’s hand. Kit struggles to comprehend how the flu pandemic can be as deadly as the war.
Chapter 22 Summary
Wendy narrates from New York in March 1987. Wendy finds the other half of the announcement sharing the news of Cookie’s death. She and Roberto spend the weekend together, and he reminds her not to use research as procrastination; she has to write. The next day, Wendy finds information on Marcelle Moreau in the files: she studied librarianship at the NYPL, then taught at the Alliance Francaise. In class, Professor Hill calls her writing about the Cards “enthralling” but a “fairy tale,” saying no one helps others for no reason. Afterward, Wendy’s classmates praise her story. Meredith encourages Wendy to visit the Alliance Francaise.
Chapter 23 Summary
Kit narrates from Blérancourt in November 1918. Kit continues writing dutiful letters home but worries when she gets no response. At the communal harvest dinner, a French military officer brings a telegram, and Sidonie tells Kit she learned of her husband’s death by telegram. However, it is good news: the war has ended. Kit vows to stay in France, and announces a plan to refit ambulances as mobile libraries.
Many families returning to Blérancourt are heartened by the bookmobile’s visits, saying it’s “a luxury to have stories again” (237). German prisoners of war are set to work rebuilding. Kit is scared of some of them, who seethe with anger and leer at Marcelle. One day, one of them attacks Monsieur Hugo and escapes.
Chapter 24 Summary
Kit narrates from Blérancourt in December 1918. Kit and Sidonie are decorating a tree when Kit receives a telegram from Mabel: their mother died of influenza. Kit struggles with guilt at not being there, realizing too late how much her mother meant to her. While she was always irritated by her concern and her admonitions to marry, she realizes that her mother was there throughout her life, caring for her and showing her how to be independent. Even Anne Morgan remarks, “I’m forty-five years old, and don’t know what I’d do without my mother” (241), when offering Kit a leave of absence to go home. Kit struggles between the longing to be home and a feeling of duty to stay.
She is sorry she hasn’t brought anything of her mother’s to France, only her father’s handkerchief. Cards and villagers offer comfort and care by bringing her tea and sitting with her, but only Marcelle helps her feel better. She tells Kit she read a note in Anne Morgan’s office saying, “[I]t would be a distinct loss if she should leave us” (244). Marcelle says Kit is “indispensable,” and that is the best thing a person can be. Kit’s tears make Marcelle cry, and she gives the girl her father’s handkerchief. Kit resolves to stay in order to ensure Marcelle’s future.
Chapters 19-24 Analysis
With the deaths of Tom, Cookie, and Kit’s mother in 1918, and Wendy’s discussion of the assault with Roberto in 1987, these chapters interrogate the nature of trauma and loss, but also renewal. The reappearance of the handkerchief, the library of the mind, and the motifs of mothers and daughters and kindred spirits help to represent these ideas. The interwoven ideas in Kit’s and Wendy’s narratives become more closely connected, foreshadowing the convergence of their heretofore parallel paths.
Tending to soldiers in the aftermath of war, Kit’s tone becomes more formal and matter-of-fact. She reports on the kinds of injuries the men sustained and the daily routines she and Cookie follow, and her tone indicates a need to distance herself from feelings of helplessness. “Gassed patients couldn’t eat, so they couldn’t heal. Medicine couldn’t help these men, not even the best medicine of all—time” (194), she reports. In the face of these horrors, Kit’s retreat into the library of her mind represents literacy as a means of escape from pain. It is the kindred spirits she identifies in the letter from Sidonie, the support of Lewis, and her teatimes with Cookie that remind her literacy can also be a means of connection. Building on these connections, Kit’s effort to create a reading hour in the rest tent demonstrates her ingenuity and one of The Impacts of Women in History. While nursing and the chores she has been mindlessly completing are physically essential, her reading hour provides emotional comfort for Kit as well as the soldiers. This is acknowledged in the soldiers’ enthusiasm for the books and their affection toward her; returning their affections gives her a sense of purpose: “I liked being called ‘sister’—it was like having a thousand brothers whom I cared for, the sweetest, bravest boys” (199). It is this sense of purpose that helps her begin to heal from Tom’s death after receiving the “heavenly hello” in the form of another soldier’s copy of The Adventures of Kit Carson, adding another dimension to The Value of Literacy as a Means of Connection and Escape—sharing books with others, not retreating to the library of her mind, reminds her that she still has much work to do in France.
As with the onslaught of the German army on the first day of spring, Skeslien Charles alternates moments and days of calm with sudden, ironic reversals of fortune, keeping characters and readers on edge while following the real historical record. As they return to the village, Kit notes that the vigorous growth of the wheat fields Monsieur Hugo had seeded in the spring “seemed a good omen, though looks could deceive” (212). Though rebuilding the town and creating the mobile library helps restore a sense of order to the countryside, the idea that bad news lurks around every corner is in the front of all the characters’ minds; the novel creates the foreboding sense that there is always a trap ready to spring. Sidonie’s warning that she learned of her husband’s death by telegram suggests the worst; though that telegram tells of the end of the war, the next will indeed bring the news of Kit’s mother’s death. Just when Cookie begins to feel like one of the Cards and sits with them at the table, she is struck down by influenza. Though the Germans are defeated, a violent prisoner of war beats Monsieur Hugo and escapes. Just as things seem to be righted in one respect, the world is turned upside down and the characters are reminded that war isn’t the only danger life puts in front of people.
Each reversal and climactic moment, and in particular her mother’s death, is a turning point for Kit. As Kit compares her losses to those of the Frenchwomen she knows, she often feels her griefs are small compared with their suffering; their empathy and care after her mother’s passing validates her feelings and shows she has earned their affection. During this time, the motif of mothers and daughters and the symbol of the handkerchief again become prominent. Kit regrets that she has no “piece” of her mother with her in France, just her father’s handkerchief; the memory of a favorite line of her mother’s from Little Women demonstrates how books can form emotional connections when material ones are absent. During her period of mourning, her conversation with Marcelle is a moment of epiphany; learning that others think of her as “indispensable” cements her determination to finish her mission with CARD and ensure Marcelle’s future, echoing a motherly protectiveness of her own.
These themes and reversals are echoed in Wendy’s narrative. As she begins getting closer to Roberto, the trauma of the sexual assault returns to haunt her; as she is making progress with her book about the Cards, Hill suggests the story is shallow. However, her connections to other people provide solace, validation, and a path forward; commiserating with her classmates lets her know they are no more confident than she, and in fact admire her. As her research unearths Marcelle’s whereabouts and brings her closer to her classmates, she remarks that “for once, I feel a part of the group, not outside it. An unexpected gift from the Cards” (229). The additional gift of Meredith’s familiarity with the Alliance Francaise hints that Wendy is about to make the final link she needs between past and present so that the paths of her narrative and Kit’s can converge.
