The Sisters of Book Row
When Celia Applebaum finds a mysterious parcel in a box outside her family’s bookstore, she’s afraid she’s about to open the manuscript of birth control advocate Margaret Sanger’s radical Family Limitations. Instead, she finds an ancient treasure, a papyrus bundle, perhaps the work of the ancient poetess, Sappho. It should be a wonderful discovery, but this is Manhattan in 1915. Anthony Comstock’s men are on the lookout for banned material, some pornography, but also works of art that offend Comstock’s Puritan sensibilities. Sappho’s work could send Celia and her sisters to jail if they’re found with it in their bookshop. But how to return something, when you’ve no idea where it came from?
The three Applebaum sisters who live and work in this Fourth Avenue bookstore are all different but engaging characters. There’s serious elder sister, Olivia, who has set aside her job at the Metropolitan Museum, a decision she regrets for both professional and personal reasons. Daphne, the middle sister, is outgoing and fun-loving, afraid she’ll be trapped in a dusty bookstore for the rest of her days. And the youngest, Celia, is fired up about the issues of the day, and secretly working to promote women’s health. It’s a passion that might spell trouble for the sisters. Noble does a good job of balancing fact and fiction in this novel, with an entertaining sister story mixed in with some more serious historical information about the time period. Perfect for a reader who enjoys a heartfelt family story and likes to learn something about the past along the way.
