Girl Waits with Gun

Girl Waits with Gun (2015) Amy Stewart (Kopp Sisters)

Set in New Jersey in 1915.

After the disappointment of the previous book I finished, I needed something completely different to clear my brain. I probably read the first paragraphs of about five books before I settled on this.

First.

Constance Kopp was a real woman, and the majority of the events in this book actually happened. The author made up the dialog and some of the details and a couple of the characters, but the majority of what is between the covers is true.

Second.

I discovered that I’d actually read a book by Any Stewart before. Specifically, Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities.

Constance Kopp and her sisters spent their lives keeping their heads down and out of the public eye.

My mother married my father, Frank Kopp, at the age of twenty. He was what my grandparents called Bohemian, which meant that he was Czech, but in some convoluted way having to do with the outcomes of wars still being fought in those distant countries, they had decided that he was practically Austrian. They were relieved he wasn’t a Jew, and even though my mother had met him in New York, he wasn’t an American. On the grounds of what he was not, my grandparents allowed him to marry their daughter.

But getting hit by an automobile changes everything, and not only gets them in trouble, but gets them in the papers.

Because this is a true story, she’s about to put in a lot of things that are stark reminders of just how different life was for women, 100 years ago.

“How do three girls manage the running of a household on their own? Is there not an uncle or some other male relation who could take you in?”

A handwritten sign tacked next to the door read “MRS. LIVINGSTON’S HOME FOR THE UNWED AND FRIENDLESS. FORMERLY RESPECTABLE GIRLS ONLY. NO ADOPTIONS OFFERED.”

This is a fascinating story that I enjoyed, and was even more impressed by when I finished it and discovered that Constance Kopp was a real person and had the actual adventures described here.

Publisher: Mariner Books
Rating: 8/10

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