Their efforts to serve their subscribers despite Nazi edicts are so impressive, I was shocked to realise more people don’t know this story already. In fact, many of the characters from the American Library are based on real people. (If she hadn’t been based on a real person, I might have found this coincidence trite.) It is Miss Reeder whose courage and leadership inspires Odile and her fellow librarians to resist the Nazis as they advance on Paris, threatening the cultural life of the city as they ban ‘certain books and certain people’.
She is interviewed by the inspiring Miss Reeder, the aptly named Directress. After a family scandal sends Aunt Caro away, Odile seeks solace within the pages of her favourite books, and between the stacks of her favourite place in Paris. Odile is drawn to the ALP because it is the place where her beloved Aunt Caro used to take her for story time. An avid reader, Odile is so well-suited for a job as a librarian she even thinks in Dewey Decimal subject headings sometimes. In 1939, Odile Souchet applies for a job at the American Library in Paris, having just completed her library studies degree.
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