02204cam a2200325 4500 962675966 TxAuBib 20230830120000.0 230224s2023||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2023007834 9780593600443 0593600444 (OCoLC)1371469064 TxAuBib Williams, Pip, 1969-, author. The bookbinder / Pip Williams. First U.S. edition. New York : Ballantine Books, 2023. 436 pages : map, photograph ; 24 cm. It is 1914, and as the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, women must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who live on a narrowboat in Oxford and work in the bindery at the university press. Ambitious, intelligent Peggy has been told for most of her life that her job is to bind the books, not read them--but as she folds and gathers pages, her mind wanders to the opposite side of Walton Street, where the female students of Oxford's Somerville College have a whole library at their fingertips. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has: to spend her days folding the pages of books in the company of the other bindery girls. She is extraordinary but vulnerable, and Peggy feels compelled to watch over her. Then refugees arrive from the war-torn cities of Belgium, sending ripples through the Oxford community and the sisters' lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can educate herself and use her intellect, not just her hands. But as war and illness reshape her world, her love for a Belgian soldier--and the responsibility that comes with it--threaten to hold her back. 20230830. Women bookbinders Fiction. Twins Fiction. Sisters Fiction. Bookbinding Fiction. Soldiers Fiction. World War 1914-1918 Refugees Belgium Fiction. Oxford (England) History 20th century Fiction. Historical fiction.