Excerpt of The Blackout Book Club by Amy Lynn Green

AVIS MONTGOMERY JANUARY 31, 1942 DERBY, MAINE

Avis gripped the ladder as her husband climbed, a thick swath of black bunting draped over his shoulder. “Be careful, please, Russ.”

He looked down at her from under that dashing swoop of dark hair and grinned. “Careful as I always am.” Which did very little to reassure her.

Across from them, her brother Anthony climbed another rung, staring critically at the windows of the library’s east wall. “Are you sure the curtain’s going to be wide enough?”

Avis nodded to her notebook splayed on the floor, the num- bers arranged in neat columns like soldiers at attention. “Of course. I measured it.”

“Three times, I bet,” Russell chimed in, giving her a teasing wink.

“Four,” she admitted.

“See? I told you.” Russell bunched a corner of the blackout cloth in his fist. “All right, old man, catch!”

“Don’t even think—” Avis began, but it was too late. Rus- sell wound up like a pitcher on the mound and tossed the edge of the fabric, causing Anthony to wobble dangerously as he reached to snatch the hem.

The Blackout Book Club

If she dared to take one of her hands off the ladder, she’d be rubbing away a headache. “You’re going to fall and break your neck.”

Anthony slid the eyelet holes along the curtain rod he’d rigged up, and Russell did the same on his end. “If you’d held my ladder instead of your husband’s, you wouldn’t have to worry about me.”

“I’m fairly certain ladders were covered under my vow to have and to hold.” She smiled in satisfaction when both of them laughed, Russell’s deep and rumbling, Anthony’s breaking off in a snort at the end. Two of her favorite sounds in the world, as different as the men they belonged to. Her husband, stocky and confident, more comfortable on a fishing dock than he was at his job at the bank; her brother, gangly and warmhearted, with a quip on hand for any occasion.

At least there was no one else about to hear their nonsense. This close to closing, the library’s patrons had gone home to eat dinner and tune in to radio broadcasts about MacArthur and his boys trying to take back the Pacific.

Her hand trembled slightly as Russell climbed down. Focus on what you can control. For now, that meant measurements, regulations, and crisp right angles that matched the edges of the window frame, just as she’d planned. “A perfect fit.”

“Well done.” Russell kissed her forehead. “Miss Cavendish and the air raid warden won’t be able to find even a sliver of light.”

The periodical reading tables behind them, arrayed in two rows of three, now looked stiff and subdued in the sudden shadow.

When Anthony returned from stowing the ladders in the storage closet, a frown clouded his usually cheery face. “Grim as a funeral in here.”

“It’s wartime chic, pal,” Russell said, slapping him on the back. “Better get used to it.”

“Home décor magazines across the country will soon be touting these colors,” Avis chimed in. Already, LIFE magazine had featured Joan Fontaine in a smart cap from a movie where she played a recruit for the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

That prompted a snort from her brother. “You and your silly magazines. When will you read a real book?”

“When ‘real books’ give me tips for altering last season’s styles and a recipe for blueberry cobbler,” she fired back, a variation of her usual reply. Just because her librarian brother was a snob about books didn’t mean she had to be.

“She has a point,” Russell interjected. “Last night’s cobbler was excellent.”

Anthony shot his childhood friend a look of profound be- trayal. “There’s more to reading than information, you know.” “I’ve yet to see any proof of that.” Why, she probably learned more in a week’s worth of her reading than Anthony did in a year of paging through novels. Still, it was no good trying to persuade him. Only twenty-nine years old, but thoroughly set in his ways.

Instead of rising to her taunt, Anthony breathed in deeply. “I’m going to miss this place.”

It crept into the quiet after his words: that familiar fear that tingled through her body. For weeks, she’d pushed off the thought of Anthony’s leaving, but now, with the trip to Fort Devens only a few days away, there was nothing to be done.

Russell leaned against the shelves, strong arms folded over his chest. “What’ll Miss Cavendish do without you around here?” “Not sure. Though I did give her a suggestion for a replacement.”

Something about the way Anthony said it, heavy with im- plication, made Avis look up. Even in the shadows created by the newly darkened windows, she could see a smirk spreading on her brother’s face, and all thoughts of enlistment faded. “Anthony, you don’t mean me?”

“Come on, sis.” He directed his most charming grin at her. “You do half of our cataloguing when I get behind anyway.”

“An exaggeration.”

“And you have most of the Dewey decimal system memo- rized.”

Not an exaggeration, which unfortunately meant his idea had some legitimacy. “I couldn’t possibly. Not as a married woman.” She twisted her wedding band, a lovely solitaire, around her finger. Jobs, her mother had impressed on her, were for women who didn’t have a husband’s suit to iron and dinner to put on the table each night.

“Thousands of women are taking up war work,” Russell reasoned, shrugging.

He always took Anthony’s side. She gritted her teeth against a prickle of resentment. It was the price she paid for marrying her brother’s best friend, she supposed.

She was about to reply that that was quite a different matter when Anthony’s grin softened. “Anyway, I thought you’d be glad for something to do when Russ and I ship out.”

Despite herself, Avis’s jaw tightened, and behind her, Russell coughed. Anthony looked from one to the other, confusion on his face.

At the same time Russell began with “We haven’t actually—” she tripped over him with “Russell isn’t—”

Russell filled the awkward pause with a vague “We’re still discussing it, that’s all. Enlistment, I mean.”

Even that was only halfway true. It had been weeks since Russell had brought it up after their last argument.

Unlike the enthusiastic flag-waving masses who’d turned out when the United States declared war, Avis looked ahead to the long separations, half-empty beds, and casualty notices printed in the newspapers.

And, try as she might to ignore it, her mother’s warning, the night before the wedding and after too much champagne,whispered back into her mind, “Keep your man nearby as long as you can, or he might be tempted to wander in other ways.” Anthony blinked behind his narrow eyeglasses, face redden- ing. “Sorry. I thought . . . anyway, I didn’t realize.” He cleared his throat, moving the discussion into safer territory. “Still, it
would be good for you to get out of the house, Avis.”

“But I don’t have a college degree,” she said, “and, in case you’ve forgotten in the five minutes since it was brought up, I don’t even read books.”

“You could learn.” Anthony scooped up the library keys from the empty sugar bowl where she’d insisted he keep them after misplacing them one too many times. “Seriously, Avis, we need someone to keep the doors open.”

“It’s not as if Miss Cavendish will shut the place down.”

At that, Anthony hesitated, looking back toward the oil painting of the somber man overlooking the shelves, the only piece of artwork allowed on the walls. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. It was her father’s pet project, not hers. Something about this place . . . well, she pays the bills, but she doesn’t seem to like it.”

“Why’s that?” Russell asked.

“Beats me. With Miss C, you learn not to pry.” He tossed the keys in the air and headed to the entryway with his usual jaunty step. “I love this place, sis.”

As if he needed to tell her. He’d spent at least half his child- hood either here or buried in one of the adventure novels he’d checked out from the shelves.

When he’d left for college, everyone, Mother included, ex- pected he would “make something of himself” and never re- turn. But he’d come back to Derby four years ago, degree in hand, content to spend the rest of his life in the small coastal town working at the association library that had once been his refuge.

“Come on, Avis. Promise me you’ll keep it up for me while

I’m gone. Please?” He looked down at her with those big, ear- nest brown eyes that had worn her down since childhood.

“I promise,” she found herself saying.

The whoop he let out while tackling her with a hug was probably the loudest noise the staid old building had heard in ages, and Avis couldn’t help smiling.

Really, this place might benefit from a woman’s touch. Be- sides, Anthony wouldn’t be gone long, and if she could get through the war cataloging books without actually having to read them, why, no one would be the wiser.

GINNY ATKINS JANUARY 31, 1942 LONG ISLAND, MAINE

The way Mack Conway swaggered toward the harbor, Ginny Atkins would have guessed he’d hit the bottle a mite too hard, except it was only afternoon. Besides that, a Sunday suit poked out of his coat, his tousled head topped with a spiffy-looking fedora.

She waved at him with her scrub brush. Now that the busy season for lobstering had passed, it was time for three months of repairing traps and painting buoys for next year. Today, Pa had stayed home—“business to take care of,” he had said, and she’d been told to take advantage of the sunny day to work away at the grime and bait that scummed up the Lady Luck’s deck. Instead of sauntering past to the bustle of lobstermen and boys tending their equipment, Mack stopped right in front of her. “Fine day, Ginny,” he boomed, his voice deeper than
normal, aging him past his nineteen years.

Ginny wiped her cold, wet hands on her trousers, suddenly feeling grimy in her scuffed rubber boots and brother’s overcoat. Who’d have thought ol’ Mack would outdress her? “Where you been, Mack?”

His grin spread even wider, like he’d been waiting on her to ask. “Took a ferry to the recruiting center.”

“Already?” And she tried, really she did, to keep the dismay out of her voice.

It had all happened so fast. One day, Roosevelt was saying they were likely to stay out of the whole mess in Europe; next thing you knew, Japan had sunk those ships in Hawaii and all the young fellows on the island were lining up to stuff them- selves in uniforms.

“Can’t wait to lick those Japs.” Mack rapped his knuckles just under his shoulder. “Once we show ’em who’s boss, I’ll come back with so many medals pinned to my chest there’ll barely be room for buttons.”

Ginny watched him for a moment, her breath coming out in white puffs as seagulls filled the silence with unearthly screeches. There was a spark she’d never seen before on Mack’s face, a pride in the way he squared his shoulders in the hand- me-down coat.

With the lobster boat, traps, and know-how Pa had gotten from his father, Ginny’s family was one of the wealthiest on the island, on account of having steady work. The Depression had knocked other folks, like the Conways, down often enough that they stopped trying to get up. Mr. Conway was snow-in- the-woodbox poor, and she’d heard Mack mumble a dozen shamefaced excuses when her brother invited him to go to the movies or grab a soda.

“I bet you will,” Ginny said, rewarding Mack with a smile. If he hadn’t been weighed down with spit-shined shoes, he might have floated up to join the planes that were always zooming past from the Godfrey Army Airfield.

Then his smile faltered. “Say, Ginny?”

“Say what?” She jammed her hands deeper into her coat pockets as a sudden breeze rammed against her.

“Want to be my girl?”