The Brightwood Code by Monica Hesse

Eighteen-year-old Edda Grace St. James had been a telephone operator with the American Expeditionary Forces, on the western front in France, in 1918. Her job was to "...answer the line, match the code name to a number, insert the right plug into the right jack, connect the telephone call." The codes changed every day so every night, Edda and the other girls had to memorize two pages of new codes. Then the next day they would sit down at their switchboards, "and when a caller asked to be connected to Montana or Buster or Wabash," Edda and the other operators would understand that they wanted to be connected to a specific division or general.  

Now back in America, in November of 1918, Edda is working at the Central switchboard in Washington, D.C. Her supervisor, Miss Genovese is not happy with Edda: she has incurred several "infractions" for her dress or not following proper protocol on the switchboard. Edda has been home from France for two months now. The last call of her night shift is a caller who tells her she has to tell the truth before it's too late and ends with the word, "Brightwood". Unable to find out more from the mysterious caller, Edda leaves work very upset.

She returns to her Aunt Tess's boarding house where she has a room on the fourth floor, along with other boarders including a young man, Theo Graybill who has a limp from a hip injury. Theo notices immediately that something is not right with Edda and he presses her to tell him. But all Edda will reveal is that she took a local call that was "odd". He tries to reassure Edda that the call was likely just random as it is impossible to choose the operator on a call. 

Unable to sleep after her shift, Edda decides to purchase new clothing instead of doing her laundry. While Edda is in Hecht's to purchase new white blouses and navy wool skirts, two women run in, announcing the war is over. An Armistice has been signed! This leads to partying and celebrating everywhere including at Edda's aunt's boarding house. Intoxicated after drinking champagne, and still deeply upset over the call, Edda finally tells Theo what actually happened that fateful day seven months ago in France.

She explains to Theo that as a "Hello Girl" and part of the American Expeditionary Forces, it was Edda's job as an operator to transfer calls between platoons, bases and generals, speaking and translating between French and English. Everything was in codes that changed daily. Ordered to place a call one night to Brightwood, the code Edda believes was for Baltimore's Forty-Eighth Regiment, Edda froze, unable to remember the code. The Forty-Eighth Regiment had advanced beyond the front and were trapped. Thirty-four men perished. The recent caller to her switchboard used the code, Brightwood and told her to tell the truth. 

Edda decides that she has to return to her home in Roland Park in Baltimore to retrieve a Polk's City Directory. When she calls Aunt Tess to ask her to bring money to the train station, Edda learns that one of the switchboard operators, Louisa Safechuck has killed herself. However, it is Theo who brings her the money and who accompanies Edda to Baltimore against her wishes.  On the train, Theo confesses to Edda that he shot himself in the leg to avoid going to the front.

In Baltimore, Edda and Theo have a difficult run in with her father, who is dismissive towards Theo and unkind towards Edda. After visiting the home of Charley Dannenberg, one of the soldiers who died that night, and meeting his angry father, the two return home. The very next shift, Edda receives yet another telephone call telling her she's the only one who can help them, once again mentioning Brightwood. Hysterical, her adjoining operator, Helen Gibson takes Edda to the break room where she is offered a chance to do a publicity shoot for the Hello Girls.

Back at her room, Edda tells Theo about the second call and the two sit down to try to determine which families might be the most suspect. But as Edda and Theo continue to investigate the families of the dead soldiers, Edda must finally face the reality of the trauma she experienced and tell the truth about what really happened that fateful night. 

Discussion

The Brightwood Code is a historical fiction novel set in 1918, at the end of World War I. The story focuses on Edda St. Clair, a former Hello Girl who has returned suddenly from France, traumatized by an event that led to the deaths of thirty-four young soldiers.  The story alternates between Edda in the present, in Washington, attempting to uncover the mystery of the caller and the recent past events that occurred while she was at the front in France.

Believing that she could forget what happened if she left France, and found work in a different city Edda's returns to the United States. However, her life begins to unravel. She returns home to Baltimore, her father describing her arrival "...like a ghost, telling us nothing is wrong but of course something is wrong. Her room is a pigsty. She has to be dragged into the bath." She flees from her own homecoming party and is unable to dance with the son of her father's boss. Soon after, Edda flees from Baltimore, to Washington where she is able to find work as a telephone operator with Bell. It is at this point that Edda receives two mysterious calls, mentioning the code word Brightwood and begging her to tell the truth. The past has come back to haunt her and Edda is determined to find out who is behind the calls.

Initially Edda believes that the mysterious caller is someone related to one of the dead soldiers, all of whose names she has memorized, and is asking her to claim responsibility for their deaths. Edda is certain that she is responsible because she failed to do her job. "Of course there are things I left out. But nothing that would excuse any of my behavior...Boys were dying on the front. My job was to answer telephones. My only job was to answer telephones." However as the story unfolds, it is not quite that simple.

Edda believes she must investigate each soldier's family to determine who is making the calls. Theo challenges her as to what she hopes to achieve, telling her, "But what kind of endings do you think you can give?....You can't rewrite what happened, no matter what you do. None of us can. Whatever happened is what happened." Edda tells him, "There has to be something. There has to be some kind of finality. Some kind of way of making peace. It can't be the case that something horrible happens and you just have to live, forever, with this feeling of..." 

 As Edda continues to struggle to solve the mystery of who is contacting her, her feelings of guilt and conflict intensify. "I need peace, and I need an ending, and I need to make amends and have amends made to me. And I need to bring my soul back from France. I cannot keep living divided this way, I cannot keep feeling as though I am still in that switchboard room, still in that switchboard room with Luc." 

When Edda meets Charley Dannenberg's father a second time she recognizes the "primal woundedness", the "pain stuffed down" and the "untended grief" he is experiencing because she is experiencing the same. But it's after meeting August Danneman's sister, Eliza, that Edda begins to make sense of what happened to her in France. "Is it possible that I did the best I could with the choices I had? Is it possible that what happened to the boys of the Forty-Eighth was because of something I did, but not my fault? Is it possible that I am to blame, but not to punish?"

When Theo explains how he got out of fighting in the war, he tells Edda that his choice to do anything to get out of the war means he is a coward. But Edda tells him that maybe our choices simply  show "who we were forced to be in the moment that we made them."

Early in the novel, Theo quickly and correctly surmises that Edda's trauma is somehow related to a man named Luc. Edda refuses every attempt to discuss him and it isn't until much later when she remembers the details of that night in the office that it is understandable why this is. Eventually, Edda discovers the person behind the calls and learns that they were not asking her to take responsibility for the deaths of the men of the Forty-Eighth Regiment but to expose a man who had harmed her and possibly many other Hello Girls. These revelations lead Edda to realize that she had been so focused on what happened to the young soldiers, she missed recognizing her own trauma. "I was so focused on the story of the boys who were hurt and lost at war that I missed the story of how I was hurt and lost at war. I missed part of the story. I missed my own part of the story." 

The novel highlights some of the terrible realities of World War I, a war that saw many young men humiliated into enlisting, believing that their honor depended upon doing so. The reality of the war was young soldiers were sent out again and again by generals behind the lines, to face the muck, machine gun fire and gas without any chance of success and little of surviving. As the war dragged on with neither side winning, many people came to see the war as a hopeless endeavor with little regard for the soldiers. Mr. Dannenberg states this to Edda when they meet a second time.  "The truth is that boys like him are expendable. They fought in trenches but the decision about their lives were made over the telephone by people who got to keep their hands clean. That boys like my son never belonged in France, died their because of people like you. Because you were cruel and careless. My son paid with his life, and the people who drove him to enlist, and the people who should have looked after him once he got there -- they didn't pay at all."

The character of Theo Graybill is representative of those young men who were terrified to go to war, who in some way knew the measure of what was happening, but who had no say. " 'I was so scared, ' he continues. 'When my number was called, going was what I was supposed to do. Be a man. Be the first brave man in the family. I wanted to go but I was so scared to go, and I would have done anything not to go. And then I got there and I did. Do anything. I did anything I could do to come home again....' "

The novel also highlights the almost impossible predicament women who have been sexually assaulted faced in the early twentieth century. The conversation between Edda and her supervisor, Miss Genovese portrays the difficulty they faced in reporting Luc. When Edda asks why she didn't report him, Miss Genovese states that it didn't happen to her, that she needed someone who had been harmed by Luc L'Enfant, and that she would have been blamed for allowing the assault to happen to Louisa Safechuck. She knew that Edda was likely also a victim of Luc because of her premature arrival home from France and so she needed to try to get her to report him. And still she wasn't even sure if that was enough.  "It doesn't work to have just one girl's word against a man. You need two. You need twenty...Maybe twenty still would not have been enough. Maybe none of them would have been enough."

The Brightwood Code is a well written and thought-provoking novel that uses the historical fact of the Hello Girls as its backstory. What starts out as a character trying to solve a mystery, reveals a whole other story, in a twist that is heartbreaking. In spite of all that has happened, the novel does end on a positive tone, with Edda open to developing her friendship with Theo.

The Hello Girls were female switchboard operators in what was known as the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit during World War I. The unit was formed in 1917 and was made up of two hundred twenty three women, most of whom served in France.

The Brightwood Code is another excellent novel by author Monica Hesse and is highly recommended for older readers due to the issues explored in the novel.

Book Details:

The Brightwood Code by Monica Hesse

New York: Little, Brown and Company    2024

321 pp.

Nowhere Wild by Joe Beernink

Nowhere Wild is the gripping survival story of two young people caught in a deadly post-apocalyptic world. Set in northern Manitoba, Beernink weaves two narratives together into a gritty, heart-stopping climax.

Thirteen-year old Isabelle (Izzy) Chamberlain and her older sister Angie have been living in Thompson when a influenza pandemic strikes. Fifteen-year-old Jake Clarke is alone at a lake in northern Manitoba, unaware of what's been happening to people in the cities and towns. Izzy and Jake tell their stories in alternating narratives. Izzy's story begins in the winter when Jake is struggling to survive with his dying grandfather, Amos. The two narratives catch up when Jake discovers Izzy the next summer on his journey to Laroque to look for his missing father.

When Izzy and her sister Angie are attacked in the house they are ransacking for clothing and wood, Angie yells at Izzy to flee. She escapes, unable to help her sister. Seeing Rick, the older man who has been helping them, Izzy tells him Angie has been attacked. Rick immediately goes to the house but after a series of gunshots returns and tells Izzy that her sister is dead and that they need to return to the bush to be safe. 

They travel through the north part of Thompson, where Rick and his wife Lois and son, Brian once lived. Rick and Izzy's families were very close; her father and Rick were close and Brian was like a big brother to Izzy.  Izzy's parents died four months ago from the flu; first her father, then her mother. Izzy and Angie were taken in by Lois who was now divorced from Rick. But then she died and Rick returned to his ex-wife's home. In July, Izzy and Angie left Thompson with Rick. Food became scarce, so along with many others they had headed south to Winnipeg. Meeting survivors from Winnipeg heading north they learned of gangs who stole and killed. When their group was attacked by these gangs, Rick took them into the bush where they remained for the rest of the summer. In September when the weather cooled and they ran out of food, Izzy, Angie and Rick returned to Thompson.

With Angie dead, they now head into the bush. Rick grabs the cross-country skis, snowshoes and the deer carcass and they head out of town into the woods.Impatient, Rick blazes through the bush not caring whether Izzy can keep up. Sleeping in a thin tent, cold and hungry, Izzy and Rick make their way to a large lake which is now frozen over. In a blinding blizzard, Izzy almost becomes lost but the two eventually arrive at a dilapidated cabin that was once frequented by Rick's grandfather. While Izzy spends several days cleaning the cabin and gathering firewood, Rick sets traps and hunts for food. He begins talking about staying at the cabin permanently, referring to Izzy as Isabelle and then begins to make Isabelle a bed. However, to Izzy's horror the bed he makes is for both of them. Reluctantly Izzy agrees to share the bed not really realizing what is about to happen. Then one night as a storm rages, Rick rapes Izzy. As the rapes continue nightly, Izzy finds herself trapped in a cabin, in the middle of the bush, entirely dependent upon Rick for her survival. Devastated she realizes that when she and Angie were in the bush the previous year, Rick was raping her sister. She comes to the realization that she will have to escape, otherwise she will be trapped for good.

To that end, knowing she will never be able to fire one of Rick's guns, Izzy makes herself a slingshot and becomes adept at using it. She is so good that one day she is able to kill a hare for dinner. However, when Rick returns to find her cooking the delicious hare and he has only a small ptarmigan, he becomes enraged. He beats Izzy, throws her dinner into the fire and burns the slingshot. This only makes Izzy more determined to leave. Izzy finally decides she can no longer go on when Rick murders a man who suddenly appears at their cabin and who understanding what is happening to Izzy, attempts to take her to safety.

Meanwhile, during the summer before winter sets in, Jake Clarke sets out to learn what has happened to his father, Leland Clarke. Jake, his mother and his father, along with his eighty-year-old grandfather, Amos, had been flown in the previous June to spend a week at a cabin on a northern Manitoba lake. Their pilot, Jim Bridger, never showed up and the radio had been silent for days. Unusual for the start of the summer season. By late August they realized that no one was coming to get them. When Jake's mother cut herself while filleting a fish, her hand soon became infected and she developed sepsis. Jake's father decided to go for help - a journey of one hundred and fifty kilometers to Laroque. Leland told Jake he would return in three weeks but he never did. His mother died three days after his dad left. Amos, who is Cree, tells Jake that years of hard living after the death of his wife, Beth, have left him with little time left - maybe until spring. Eleven months later, having survived the winter, Jake is burying his grandfather and heading south to find his father.

Using maps and following the route planned out by Amos, Jake begins his journey remembering the advice of his grandfather not to travel too quickly. He explained to Jake that he will need to portage over land once the rivers turn north, to get to Sand Lakes Provincial Park and into the Churchill watershed. Fighting hordes of mosquitoes, the exhaustion of portaging, and a lack of food, Jake works his way slowly south. Along the way through ridges and small lakes, Jake remembers his father's survival checklist: shelter, fire, water, food and his grandfather's tips on traveling in the unforgiving northern wilderness.

Jake's travels on the river do not last very long however when disaster strikes. He runs into a log jam causing his canoe to sink. Without a canoe, Jake must now travel through the bush on foot which is not only more difficult but takes longer. One day in early summer, Jake hears gunshots which lead him to Izzy's cabin. Hidden in the bush,he witnesses Izzy attempting to escape using what Jake recognizes as Bill Six Rivers canoe. To his horror he witnesses Rick's vicious assault on Izzy. Unable to process what he's seen and unwilling to accept the possibility that he might have to kill a man, Jake decides to move on quickly. However, unable to get the memory of Izzy's beating out of his mind, Jake knows he has to return and help the girl whom he believes will not live much longer. When he reaches the cabin, Jake watches as Izzy tries to drown herself in the lake. Grabbing the canoe he quickly enters the lake, pulling a drowning Izzy to safety. Rick is not content to lose Izzy and despite shooting at Jake, the two manage to make it to safety. But they know Rick will not give up Izzy so easily. Can they make it back to Laroque before Rick tracks and finds them?

Discussion

Nowhere Wild is an exciting story about the struggle of two teens to survive in the harsh post-pandemic Canadian wilderness. Jake Clarke must survive a 260 kilometer journey through the bush relying on his wilderness skills to find food and shelter. Jake's narrative is filled with detailed descriptions of bush skills, encounters with wildlife and travel. His ability to overcome the difficulties he encounters will determine whether or not he survives the journey back to Laroque. Jake draws on his Cree heritage and his experience working with his father's venturing business to help him survive. Until he meets Izzy, Jack has no idea what has happened to people outside the bush.

The situation with Izzy forces Jake to confront the possibility of having to kill a man in order to save someone's life. Jake has to make a choice between being home in Laroque in ten days time or going back and rescuing a girl he doesn't know. What he does know is that "His father had asked him, all those months ago, to do him proud --to do what needed to be done." and the fact that the girl knew what was going to happen to her if she was caught by the man, trying to escape. Despite this, Jake struggles with the possibility of having to kill a man. "Deer and bears were animals -- food. To be respected, no doubt -- but food just the same. Deer blood was no more disgusting to him than oil to a mechanic. But human blood - that blood would stain. It would leave a deep, dark patch on his soul."

Two weeks after their escape, Jake realizes that Rick has not given Izzy up. Not knowing all the details of Izzy's relationship with Rick, he questions her as this will influence whether or not he needs to use his gun. Later as they are being pursued by Rick, Izzy asks Jake for the gun. Jake tells her "Even if you could handle this gun, shooting a man is not like shooting a deer, Iz." Jack wants to be the one to fire his father's gun but he still holds out hope that it won't come to that.

Izzy Chamberlain must survive the brutal abuse at the hands of Rick until the summer and she can make her escape. Izzy is a resourceful young girl but unlike Jake, because of what she has experienced she appears to have no qualms about the possibility of killing Rick. She realizes that he will never let her go.

Beernink builds his story to a heart-pounding conclusion. Not including a narrative by Rick places the reader in the same situation as Jake and Izzy; they have no idea where he is or if he's even following them and what he's thinking. Yet the confrontation with Rick is not unexpected and in that regard he's a very predictable antagonist. A map showing the location of Izzy and Rick's cabin and the route travelled by Jack south towards Laroque and Thompson would have helped place the setting of the novel. Details are never really given about the flu pandemic except that almost everyone who contracts the illness, dies, leaving a world that collapses economically and socially. 

This novel cannot be recommended for teens because of the sexual violence and gun violence it contains. This survival story could have been written without the overt violence and been just as impactful. Joe Beernink, who is a software developer living with his family in Seattle, grew up in southwestern Ontario. Nowhere Wild is his debut novel.

Book Details:

Nowhere Wild by Joe Beernink
Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd       2015
296 pp.