Charity Girl

ISBN-13: 9780618919789 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 336 str.

Michael Lowenthal

Opis

During World War I, seventeen-year-old Frieda Mintz secures a job at a Boston department store and strikes out on her own, escaping her repressive Jewish mother and marriage to a wealthy widower twice her age. Determined to find love on her own terms, she is intoxicated by her newfound freedom and the patriotic fervor of the day. That is, until a soldier reports her as his last sexual contact, sweeping her up in the government s wartime crusade against venereal disease. Quarantined in a detention center, Frieda finds in the Home s confines a group of brash, unforgettable women who help her see the way to a new kind of independence.
Charity Girl is based on a little-known chapter in American history that saw fifteen thousand women across the nation incarcerated. Like When the Emperor Was Divine, Lowenthal s poignant, provocative novel will leave readers moved - and astonished by the shameful facts that inspired it. "