Pip Williams
The Bookbinder of Jericho
Oxford, 1914.When the the young men are drawn away to fight, it is the women who must keep going. Twin sisters Peggy and Maude work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of studying – but is often reminded that her job is to bind the books, not read them. Maude, meanwhile, is extraordinary and vulnerable. She wants nothing more than what she has, and Peggy must watch over her.
When refugees arrive from devastated Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and through the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future: one where she can use her intellect and not just her hands. But as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back…
