Description
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.Author: Michael Lowenthal
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 01/08/2008
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.43w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780618919789
ISBN10: 0618919783
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Historical | General
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Mystery & Detective | Women Sleuths