The Librarian of Burned Books

by Brianna Labuskes

And she . . . laughed. Derisively. Putting every ounce of disdain into it that she held for this man, this party, these weak-willed politicians who couldn’t win fairly and so tried to burn any idea that would undermine their house of cards.

Maybe it had been more than that. Dev was still working for the Nazis, making her films, penning scripts that the Dev from nights at the cabaret would mock relentlessly. In that spring of 1933 it had been different, though.

Why is Dev still working with the Nazis? Is she a mole?

Dev, though . . . She hadn’t stopped. Despite having the money and fame that would have easily let her escape the clutches of the Nazis, she hadn’t stopped.

Viv sputtered a little. “I’m the author of all this, not a character.”

Is Viv talking to Althea? Is Althea the Librarian or is it Hannah? I'm leaning towards Althea…

They were both drenched. The mist had turned to a full-on rain, protecting the books that had yet to make it to the fire.

Now, Hannah couldn’t even remember how she’d met Deveraux. A friend of a friend of a friend, perhaps. The woman had seemed so glamorous, so cynical, so worldly. Her insults directed toward the Nazis were neither veiled nor subtle. She had been up-front about the fact that she was going to use them to fund her visit to Germany, but she wasn’t on their side. In 1933, that had seemed like an understandable bargain.

The terrible men Hitler had surrounded himself with were absolutely complicit in what was happening, but so were the otherwise decent people who thought that Hitler’s success could ultimately benefit them if they simply held their noses over the parts of him they didn’t like.

A power she had never known she had caught fire, and the flames burned away the fear that she had been coming to believe was one of her foundation stones.

“History is built on moments that feel insignificant,” Hannah said again, and Althea marveled at how she could land each word as a punch. “And so in every moment you must ask yourself: Do you want to be the ones handing out the gasoline cans? Or the ones trying to put out the fire?”