Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions (Kopp Sisters #3)

by Amy Stewart

Young women were being locked up for months, and possibly years, over offenses that amounted to little more than leaving their parents’ home without permission, or carrying on with an unsuitable man. Constance couldn’t help but notice that the unsuitable men were never arrested for their part in the crime.

It was well known to all the deputies that only the men sobbed loudly enough to be heard all over the jail. Women inmates tended to be practiced in the art of crying themselves silently to sleep. But a man on his first night behind bars, overcome by shame and remorse, was guaranteed to keep everyone awake.

Any girl her age would be thinking of marriage. She couldn’t bear the idea of marrying a man who stayed home from the war, and she wasn’t particularly interested in marrying one if he was only going to run off to fight and might never return.

“We’re counting on an awful lot of people remembering how to lie to Fleurette,” Norma said. “I’m counting on Fleurette being too self-absorbed to notice what anyone’s saying if it doesn’t pertain directly to her.” “Then it might work.” Norma went back to the stack of letters she’d been reading.