Category Archives: Library column

Banned Book Week

Every year in September the American Library Association (ALA) highlights books that have been controversial through the past year. They call it “Banned Book Week.” The theme this year is, “Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us.” This year has been an interesting year for banned books. Rather than waiting until September to make the news, book challenges have been front-page news all year. 

What is this all about? Who should get to decide what Americans can read? Who should decide what information you have access to? Should politicians choose books for us to read? Should librarians? Should parents be responsible for what their children check out? Is this the beginning of a slippery slope of not being personally responsible for our choices?

Personally, I don’t trust politicians to pick out my reading material, or what my children can read. It’s not personal, but I know what our family values are, and they aren’t likely to overlap much with any politician’s values. What is right for your family may not be right for my family. Ashley Macdonald from Wellington, Colorado said, “I don’t want anyone in this room telling me how to parent my child and I won’t tell you how to parent yours.”

Unlike politicians, librarians learn how to select books they don’t agree with. Nobody would want to read only books that I like. Libraries have a responsibility to provide information about all sides of an issue, not just the ones the librarian likes. Not just the ones certain people like. It’s how we provide information for the entire community.

How does censorship divide us?

“And Tango Makes Three” is a book about two real-life male penguins who adopted and hatched an egg. It’s been on the banned book list since 2005. You might not want your child to read about a penguin who has two dads, but same-sex marriage is legal in the United States. Families in our community want to read about other families like theirs. 

Some books that have been banned seem silly to us, but the people who objected felt their reasons were valid. Someone objected to “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank because it was too depressing. Well, yes, war is generally a depressing subject, but putting a face on the Holocaust helps us understand humanity.

“Goosebumps” by R.L. Stine was banned for the series’ violent nature. Aside from being violent, these books are what we call “high-low,” which stands for high interest-low vocabulary. These sorts of books get reluctant readers hooked on reading. James Patterson writes about 25 high-low books for adults each year. They are easy to read, they have a lot of action, and coincidentally many of Patterson’s books are violent. It turns out readers of all ages enjoy reading scary books.

Libraries in two states removed “Little House on the Prairie” from their shelves. A re-read of Wilder’s book will jog your memory. Caroline Ingalls had strong, uncharitable feelings towards the Native American families. Families the homesteaders crowded off their lands. Rather than remove the book from shelves, we could use this opportunity to discuss how the language she uses is not appropriate and how society has changed. Wilder’s books remind us of a “simpler, more innocent time” but was it so simple for everyone?

How do books unite us? Two of my favorite authors said it best. Dr Seuss said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” George R.R. Martin said,“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.”  Reading opens up doors to other people’s perspectives. Books are doors into things we don’t understand, like how the Holocaust affected real-life people. Books can leave us on the edge of our seats. Books also show us our history, things our ancestors did well, and mistakes they made.

Ultimately, we are Americans who believe in freedom and the First Amendment. This means we are responsible for supervising our children’s reading interests. We can select what we want to read ourselves, but it also means letting others decide for themselves and their families. 

Suzanne Fisher Staples said it well in her essay, What Johnny Can’t Read: Censorship in American Libraries: “Each book has its own gifts to offer, but the freedom to choose which to read teaches some of life’s most important lessons–trusting yourself, knowing what you believe in, tolerance–all of which are more difficult to learn once you get beyond childhood.”

Genealogy

I have an ancestor who was in the Revolutionary War, so I typed his name, Elijah Park, into My Heritage (library edition) to see what would come up. I had to guess on his birthdate-let’s see… 1775 minus 20ish…try 1752? I hit “Enter.” The first thing that popped up was my Aunt Marcia’s pedigree chart, which had my great grandma’s name on it. I didn’t even have to wonder if I had the right guy!

You’ve probably heard of Ancestry, but subscriptions to this site are expensive. Luckily, the library provides free access to My Heritage. On My Heritage you can research your ancestors by looking at the U.S. Census and many other documents. The basic site is free. If you want to add more than 250 people to your online family tree you will need to subscribe.

My Heritage and many other useful websites are located on NebraskAccess.You can access them from home with your Nebraska driver’s license or a password. If you don’t have a home computer, you are welcome to use one at the library. If you make an appointment, a librarian will be able to help you get started on your search.

Another free site is FamilySearch, which you can find with an internet search. Wikitree is an interesting site to visit as well; it contains ads and links to My Heritage. Each of these sites has a lot of the same information, but they also have different information and they work differently. If you are having trouble finding something, it may be good to check multiple sources. You can find a lot of other free genealogy sites, but these don’t have popup advertisements and contain the bulk of what is available online.

Several people a year contact me via email to ask me to look through the Gering Courier for an ancestor’s obituary. We have the Courier on microfilm starting in 1892. In addition to microfilm, we have an entire set of physical copies of the Courier and the Citizen. We also have most of the Gering High School Annuals. One of the more interesting collections we have are the City Directories, starting with 1954. You can use these to look up where people used to live in Scotts Bluff County. It gives information about what they did for a living and who their neighbors were. They are like a census, but they are published every year.

The West Nebraska Family History and Research Center at 1602 Avenue A in Scottsbluff is a great place to go for help, as well. They have a lot more genealogy and local history books than we do, but their best resource is their volunteer staff. They will be happy to help you start finding information about your ancestors.

On My Heritage, I found out that Elijah Park was married twice. He lived in Connecticut, Vermont, and New York. He had anywhere from 4 to 14 children. I discovered this by looking at other people’s research. I stopped after looking at 10 of more than 30 different family trees featuring my Elijah Park. The different numbers of children are because genealogists have different research styles and priorities. (Research sounds like a future column.) When I take the time to research Elijah myself, I will have a better idea of how many children he actually had. 

With all the resources out there: online, and in our community, you may be able to find many new and interesting things about your family tree.

Weird Coincidences

Our library page, Jada, told me she learned the word “calumny” this week because she is reading “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. (I had to look it up.) It means a false or slanderous statement. Then she picked up “Hamlet” for some light reading and came across this, “Be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shall not escape calumny.” All of the sudden she felt really smart because she already knew this word. 

Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (sometimes called frequency illusion) is what happens when you learn something and then see it again right away, like what happened to Jada. She may have seen the word “calumny” before but she didn’t take the time to look it up so it seemed new when she learned the definition. Then she saw it again shortly afterwards.

How often do we fail to notice something until it is pointed out to us? Once we learn something, we often see it again. I have experienced frequency illusion in some of my reading lately- either that or some weird coincidences.

Earlier this year I read two books back to back with a main character named Rafe (well, one was Rafer). One book was historical fiction and the other was by Janet Evanovich. I don’t know that I have ever read a book about someone named Rafe before. It’s possible, but it didn’t click until I read two in a row.

Shortly after that I read two books that both had recipes for sauerkraut and corned beef and discussed Tabasco sauce. Neither one was a cookbook. One was a book about the food immigrants ate, and the other was about salt.

The weirdest book coincidence I can think of happened last month. My minister preached on Luke 14:26. Later that day I picked up a horror novel where one of the characters quoted the same Bible verse. I know I have heard Luke 14:26 in church before. I might have read a book that mentioned the verse, but the two together on the same day seemed like a very weird coincidence.

I wonder if this is the same thing that happens when you talk about buying something and then see an advertisement for it on your phone. Do our phones listen to us, or is it Baader-Meinhof? Is our technology listening to us or is it simply a weird coincidence? I don’t know how technology works, but I do know technology doesn’t have anything to do with which books I am reading. 

Have you encountered any weird reading coincidences? I would be interested to hear about them if you have. Yesterday I finished a book about a bunny who was a vampire. Tune in next week to see if my current book, “Ray and Joan: The man who made the McDonald’s fortune and the woman who gave it all away” also contains a vampire bunny.

Voting

“That’s the trouble with a politician’s life, somebody is always interrupting it with an election.” The great Will Rogers had a lot to say about politicians and elections. Speaking of elections, we have one coming up November 8. Are you registered to vote?

It seems like voting is one of those rights we are proud to have as a society but don’t exercise as often as we should. Nebraska has 93 counties. As you read through this column, I invite you to make a mental guess as to how Scotts Bluff County ranks in Nebraska voter turnout. Voter turnout is the percentage of voters who voted.

If all politics are local, as they say, this election seems particularly important. Scotts Bluff County has a number of open seats on school boards, and city councils. Our state representative seat is open as well. These are the people who can make a direct impact on our lives.

Do you need more information about who is running for office, and where they stand? The library subscribes to the Star Herald and the Omaha World Herald. You can come in and read through the papers to learn what candidates are saying. You can also access the Star Herald online through Newsbank from the comfort of your home. If you need help with this, call the Gering Library and we will be happy to walk you through the process. When the time comes for presidential elections, we will carry books written by and about candidates from both parties.

The polls are open November 8 from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. If you don’t know where to vote, contact the County Clerk’s office at 308 436-6600. You can also find a lot of information on their website, including information about polling sites that have moved. Go to scottsbluffcounty.org and then look for “Election Office” on the menu to the left.

According to Daniel Bennett of Civic Nebraska, “One of the best ways to ensure turnout is to request a mail-in ballot or absentee ballot. You get to take your time making your selections and researching candidates and [you can] securely mail or drop off your ballot at a time that’s convenient for you.” 

You can stop by the county clerk’s office in the county administration building (1825 10th Street, Gering) to request an absentee ballot between now and the election. You can also find Scotts Bluff County online and click on “Election Office” to learn how to request a mail-in ballot. You will want to get your request in the mail in plenty of time for the county clerk to receive it by October 28. The ballot dropbox is directly west of the administration building door in the parking lot.

October 11 is the first day you can vote early at the county administration building. Sometimes it’s just easier to stop by and get it done while you are thinking about it.

You can register to vote at the county administrative building from now up to October 28. If you want to register online, you will need to get that done by October 21.

Among Nebraska’s 93 counties, Scotts Bluff County ranks 91st in voter turnout. Ninety-first from the top. Several voter precincts in the county draw over 70% voter turnout. Unfortunately, many are lower, causing our voter turnout in the last two presidential years to hover around 59-64%. These numbers come from the Scotts Bluff County Clerk’s office.

If I had the opportunity to have dinner with anyone living or dead, I would choose Will Rogers. He was sort of a combination of Johnny Carson and Baxter Black. Rogers probably leaned towards one political party, but he had a lot to say about both sides. Here are a couple of  gems: “[E]lections are a good deal like marriages, there’s no accounting for anyone’s taste.”& “The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”

Library of Congress (LOC)

Thomas Jefferson’s contributions

In 1783, James Madison suggested the idea of developing a congressional library at the new capital Washington City. Before that, the capital was located in Philadelphia and New York City. Congress was able to access libraries in these cities. The new location at Washington, D.C. did not have access to an existing college or any other library. In 1800 President John Adams approved $5000 for purchase of books. The original collection consisted of 740 books and three maps. A wing of the capitol building housed the library.

As president, Thomas Jefferson appointed the first Librarian of Congress. He chose his campaign manager as the first librarian. To date there have only been 15 Librarians of Congress. The current Librarian of Congress is Carla Hayden. Of the 15 only a handful have had any previous library experience.

During the war of 1812, the British burned the collection, destroying nearly everything. By then it consisted of 3,000 items. It was still housed in the capitol. Thomas Jefferson then offered to sell his extensive library to the United States to replenish their collection. 

Jefferson was a reader and a scholar. His collection of books was not meant to impress visitors, but to be used and studied. They were not only about government, but history, architecture, farming, and new technology including hot air balloons and submarines. 

At the time, Representative Daniel Webster objected to the secular books in the collection. Nevertheless, Congress voted to purchase Jefferson’s entire library of over 6,000 books for $23,950. This price was calculated by the measurements of the books. Jefferson shipped them to Washington in ten wagons. After this, he is said to have written, “I cannot live without books,” to a friend. Jefferson started from scratch and continued to build his personal library until his death in 1826.

Among the books Jefferson donated were “The Art of Playing on the Violin” by Francesco Geminiani, “The History of Philosophy” by Thomas Stanley and “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” through which Jefferson argued against British rule of Americans at the first Continental Congress. 

In 1851 the library caught fire again. This time the fire destroyed about ⅓ of the collection, or 35,000 books. In recent years, librarians have identified the surviving books from Jefferson’s original collection and created a display. They searched world-wide to locate duplicate copies of books that burned in 1851 and added them to the display, marking them so visitors can identify the original books as well as the replacements.

The building that we think of as the Library of Congress is the Jefferson Building. The Jefferson Building, completed in 1897, is filled with ceiling paintings, grand staircases and marble. As they ran out of space, the Library of Congress grew to include the Adams Building, constructed in the 1930s and the Madison Building, constructed in the 1980s. In addition to these three buildings, a campus in Culpepper, VA houses many materials. 

As I researched the Library of Congress for this article, I learned a lot of interesting things. Look for more about our country’s largest library in my future columns. If you can’t wait, Gering Public Library has a DVD, “The re­al ­na­tion­al trea­sure: an in­sid­e look at the Li­brary of Congress” and we have a new book about the history of the Library of Congress coming to our shelves soon.

LOC 2 What You Can Find There

The original purpose of the Library of Congress was to provide unbiased research to members of Congress. Each year the library receives thousands of requests from Congress for information on a variety of subjects. The research staff are experts in various fields. The Library of Congress also researches foreign law for Congress.

If you are planning to visit the Library of Congress, you need to obtain a free reservation ahead of time if you want to enter the building. If you will have time to do some research, you can register for a “Reader Identification Card” which will allow you to access the reading room. The stacks are closed, which means you will have to ask a librarian to retrieve the item you want to look at, then they will bring it to you. Browsing is not allowed. The Library of Congress does not check out items to people, so you will need to do your research while you are in the building.

But it’s not all serious research. Remember the recent video of rapper Lizzo playing a crystal flute? That flute was part of a large collection of flutes held by the Library of Congress. Aside from flutes, the library holds many other collections. They have 124,000 telephone books, (remember those?) and over 5.6 million maps. You can also find a vellum Gutenberg Bible, a 1763 children’s Bible, a cuneiform tablet from 2040 BC and one of the oldest printed items in the world, a Buddhist scripture dating to 770 AD.

If you can’t make it to Washington, D.C, the Library of Congress website also contains a lot of interesting information. If you need a copyright-free image for a project, you can select from a large number of fair use images. You can also view digitized versions of original documents like a 1904 autobiography of  prohibitionist Carry A. Nation or George Washington’s war correspondence. The library also houses oral histories of WWII veterans as well as recordings of slave narratives from the 1930s Federal Writer’s Project.

The Library of Congress provides braille and audio books for the blind. They distribute them to state and regional libraries to pass along to their patrons free of charge. Some of their braille items include books on how to play the piano, the clarinet, and even musical scores. You can even order a braille magazine about chess or cats.

Each day about 15,000 items arrive at the library. Librarians add around 10,000 items every day. The library has an agreement with US book dealers to acquire newly published books. Many are also sent from other countries. The library houses over 173 million items in 470 different languages. The copyright office is a branch of the Library of Congress, and the largest number of acquisitions are copyright documents.

I have heard that each year over one million books are published in English. Even though the Library of Congress has much more space than the Gering Library, they can’t possibly keep all of them.

When the Library of Congress has excess books, they make them available to other libraries through their surplus book program. When I was in Washington, D.C. I was able to go to the basement of the Madison Building and select books from a very large, very unorganized room full of bookshelves. I found two boxes of books for the Gering Public Library- you will be able to identify them because they will be marked “Library of Congress.” Be on the lookout, I found several large print westerns. Representative Adrian Smith’s office footed the shipping bill for our free books, so thank him when you see him! 

LOC 3 How It Is Organized

Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson owned between 9,000 and 10,000 books. By contrast, the Gering library contains around 32,000 books. Jefferson sold his personal library to replace the destroyed original Library of Congress when the British burned it during the War of 1812. This was not his first library though. In 1770, his original library of 400 books was destroyed in a fire. These were books he inherited from his father and others he acquired when he was in college. Jefferson began rebuilding his library immediately, adding 2000 books he bought while in France and nearly 700 he had inherited from a friend. By 1814 he had around 6,500 books which he sold to rebuild the Library of Congress. When Jefferson died in 1826 he owned around 1600 books. Most of these were sold to pay his debtors.

How did Jefferson keep track of all these books? The Dewey Decimal system wasn’t used until 1873.

The philosopher Francis Bacon determined there were three kinds of knowledge; Memory, Reason and Imagination. Jefferson modified this theory into Memory, Philosophy and Fine Arts. He used these three categories to organize his books. From the three main categories, he further divided them into 44 chapters. From there the books were organized chronologically or analytically according to Jefferson’s inclination.

Under the Memory section Jefferson included books on history, agriculture, chemistry, medicine, zoology, and what he called “Occupations of Man. Technical Arts.”

Under Philosophy Jefferson listed ethics, law, politics, mathematics, mechanics, astronomy and geography. This is also where he placed his copy of the Qur’an and his Hebrew Bible.

Under Fine Arts Jefferson included books on architecture, gardening, painting, sculpture, music, poetry, fiction, and what he called criticism.

He sent a carefully organized list with the books to Washington. When the librarian put them on the shelf, he retained the categories and chapters, but alphabetized the titles within each chapter. Jefferson was not impressed, but he eventually agreed that others would be able to use the library more easily if it was organized alphabetically.

In 1897 Charles Martel set out to better organize the now one million books in the library. By 1939 the Library of Congress Classification system was mostly complete. Many colleges and universities use “LC,” as they call it, to organize their libraries. However, most public libraries use the Dewey Decimal System.

Rather than three main categories, the Library of Congress now separates books into 21 categories, using the alphabet to distinguish each category. An additional letter is assigned for sub-categories.  For example, Agriculture is now filed under S. Horticulture is SB, animal husbandry is SF and hunting is SK. From there, Martel used numbers to further separate out each subject. Continuing with hunting, you would find fox hunting under SK 284-287 and wildlife management books under SK 351-579.

Fiction is separated out by the author’s origin, so Literature is P but English literature is PR and American literature is found under PS. 

The Library of Congress helpfully assigns their own subjects to most books so that libraries don’t have to start from scratch when they add a new book to the collection. If you look at the back of the title page in any book, you will likely find something like this: “1. Pickett, Joe (fictitious character)- Fiction. 2. Game wardens- Fiction. 3. Wyoming- Fiction. Then after that you will see something like PS3552.O87658T76.” The first part are the subjects the Library of Congress assigned, which many libraries use. The long number is where the book would be shelved. PS being American Fiction. As you can see, a lot goes into deciding where something would go on the shelf using Library of Congress classification, but I think once you learn the system it would make perfect sense.

Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month. According to the US Census around 4% of Scotts Bluff County residents are “Native American alone.” This does not count the many folks who have a Native American parent or grandparent. 

I find one of the nice things about being a reader is the opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes and learn about their life in a personal way. A study published in the “Harvard Business Review” says reading fiction improves your critical thinking and makes you more empathetic. 

As readers, we use books as mirrors to show us ourselves, but we also use books as windows to show us other people, other countries and other cultures. These books are written by native folks, which is one of the best ways to learn about another culture- from someone who belongs to it.

The following are some of the more recent books by Native American authors you can find in the Gering Library. As I compiled this list, I noticed that we need to add more books for school-aged children. I was also not able to find any recent books in our collection by Lakota authors. If you happen to know of any, please let us know. You are always welcome to let us know what you would like to see at the library.

Children’s

“Fry Bread” picture book by Kevin Noble Malillard (Seminole).

“Thunder Boy Junior” picture book by Sherman Alexie (Spokane-Coeur d’Alene).

“The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses” picture book by Paul Goble (non-native) set in Lakota country.

“The Forever Sky” picture book by Thomas Peacock (Anishinaabe Ojibwe).

“The Used-to-be Best Friend” Jo Jo Makoons grade school fiction series by Dawn Quigley (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe).

“Mary and the Trail of Tears” grade school fiction by Andrea L Rogers (Cherokee).

Fiction 

“The Only Good Indians” by Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfoot) a horror novel about elk hunting which has won multiple awards

“Calling for a Blanket Dance” by Oscar Hokeah (Cherokee/Kiowa) about a Cherokee/Mexican family trying to hold onto their heritage

“Shutter” by Ramona Emerson (Dine) the main character is a forensic photographer with a secret that helps her solve crimes.

“The Sentence” by Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) an ex-convict sets out to solve a bookstore murder.

“There, There” by Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapahoe) set at a California Powwow, it explores the complicated ties people have to each other.

Nonfiction

“Path Lit by Lightning: the life of Jim Thorpe” by David Maraniss, a 570 page biography of the athlete.

“Trickster: Native American Tales- a graphic collection” compiled by Matt Dembecki. This is a collection of trickster tales from across North America.

“Spirits of the Earth: a guide to Native American nature symbols, stories, and ceremonies” by Bobby Lake-Thom (Karuk and Seneca).

“Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the present” by David Treuer (Ojibwe).

“The Lakota Way of Strength and Courage: Lessons in resilience from the bow and arrow” by Joseph M. Marshall III (Lakota) is available on Overdrive.

Books With Maps

Maps were my Grandma’s love language. She always had an atlas handy and she would reach for it any time someone would talk about somewhere they had been.  

Map reading builds important spatial skills for children, it gives them a sense of where things are in their world. Where does Christopher Robin live in relation to Winnie the Pooh? Look in the front of the book. How does Dorothy get to the Emerald City? We know because L. Frank Baum included a beautiful map in his books. How far is it from the Beaver’s Dam to Cair Paravel? C.S. Lewis made a map for that. “Gulliver’s Travels,” “Treasure Island,” “The Princess Bride,” all of these adventure books have maps in them. 

Some of the best adult books have maps in them. We can follow the escapades of Bilbo Baggins on the map in the front of “The Hobbit.” Being able to see at a glance how close Guernsey is to France helps the reader understand how the events unfold in “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk” by Kathleen Rooney has a fabulous map showing where Lillian takes her walk in southern Manhattan. I am not very familiar with Manhattan, and being able to see where she went made the book much more interesting. 

Other books with great maps include Madeline Miller’s “Circe”, “The Devil in the White City” by Eric Larson, “The Martian” by Andy Weir and “Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett.

In 2011 a friend of mine recommended that I read George R. R. Martin’s series “A Song of Ice and Fire”- it’s also known as “Game of Thrones.” I protested that I don’t enjoy fantasy, but she insisted. I caved and proceeded to read all five books totalling 4,197 pages that year. As I read, I found myself flipping to the maps in the front of the book. Where are these folks from? Where are they going? What is the land like where they live? The maps answered all of these questions. I had a difficult time keeping track of the hundreds of characters, until I got to the appendix of the first book to discover 18 pages of character lists with allegiances and some backstory. 

That’s another thing I am happy to find in a book- a family tree. How are all these people related? Phillipa Gregory writes about English history. She makes it easy for the reader by providing family trees so you can keep the Yorks, Lancasters and Tudors straight. She also often includes maps in her books. Yaa Gyasi’s “Homegoing” follows a family from 1775 through eight generations into modern times- you can use the family tree in the front of the book to keep track of who is who. Diana Gabaldon’s books have hundreds of characters. Rather than providing a list in the back of the books she wrote two companion books with character lists in them to help readers keep everyone straight.

I think a map improves almost every book, and if you are reading a family saga, or a book with lots of characters, having a list of who’s who makes it much easier on the reader. If the writer has built a world, a map helps the reader follow the adventure- just like my grandma.

Behind the Wire by Andrea Myers

“Behind the Wire” by Andrea Myers takes place in Scotts Bluff County as World War II rages across the ocean. After the death of the author’s grandmother, the family discovered a stash of WWII era letters her grandmother had kept. Letters from several men, including Thomas, Charles and Bob. None of these men were her grandfather. Who were these men her grandmother corresponded with during the war, and why did she save their letters? Sounds like a great idea for a novel.

Building her novel around the many questions these letters call to mind, Myers introduces us to  a group of college friends at the cusp of a war that will change their lives in many ways. Three men write to Margaret (the main character) throughout the war. Myers said she didn’t change a word of any of the letters she used, but the novel is not necessarily based on actual events.

As the novel opens, Margaret is studying business but her heart is in journalism at the University of Nebraska. After the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, she and many other students left school, either to enlist or go back home to live with their parents in 1942. Margaret struggles under the overbearing thumb of her mother in Gering. She takes a job at the prisoner of war camp in Scottsbluff where she gets to know Italian and German prisoners as well as the military officers stationed there.

Myers writes about PTSD, which I haven’t noticed mentioned in the WWII fiction I’ve read. Soldiers coming home from war with mental and emotional scars is not new. PTSD was called Shell Shock in WWI and Battle Rattle in WWII. Informed through her personal experiences, Myers highlights the aftermath of the trauma soldiers faced as they tried to navigate life after war.

Myers has created a cast of likable characters in her book, Margaret, June and Bea form an isosceles triangle of friends, supporting each other. The soldiers who write Margaret become fully developed characters through their letters. Myers’ novel follows a nice pace throughout the book, and it’s an entertaining read. She includes shout-outs to area sites that locals will appreciate.

In this quote Margaret is speaking about her plans after the war, “‘I truly hope that when I’m back in Lincoln I can focus on school without putting on an act for everyone that I’m more interested in men than my studies. I want a fresh start.’

‘If you want fresh, Bob’s probably your guy. He’s not holding back on that innuendo.’…Bea waggled her eyebrows at her.”

I would recommend “Behind the Wire” by Andrea Myers to anyone who enjoys WWII books, and anyone who likes to read about the history of the North Platte Valley. It will be available soon at the Gering Library, but you can find it for sale in local stores. It’s also available through online booksellers.