Despite its title, at the end of MISS KOPP JUST WON’T QUIT, Amy Stewart’s fourth novel featuring sheriff’s deputy Constance Kopp and her sisters, many readers (myself included) wondered if this was the end of the road for this enjoyable series of historical mysteries. Constance’s beloved boss had just stepped down from his position, and his elected replacement made it very clear that he had no use for a woman --- especially a strong woman like Constance --- in his department. So much of Stewart’s series had focused on Constance’s (unevenly successful) attempts to infiltrate a thoroughly macho world and make it her own. Where could she possibly go next?

Well, readers can rejoice, because Constance (and her sisters, Norma and Fleurette) are back, and in her typically thorough style, Stewart has managed to give them a new plot line that is not only consistent with their characters but also a well-researched glimpse into a lesser-known aspect of First World War history. At the same time, MISS KOPP ON THE MARCH introduces a new character who, like the Kopps themselves, is an actual historical figure.

"Stewart continues to round out her portrayal of Constance, Norma and Fleurette, crafting them into bold and remarkable characters with whom readers will be delighted to spend even more time."

It's 1917, and the Kopps are traveling from New Jersey to Chevy Chase, Maryland, where Norma has signed up to teach a class on raising and training messenger pigeons as part of the National Service School, a series of short-term training camps for women that were sort of like boot camp-lite, meant to give the girlfriends, wives and sisters of young men shipping out to the European front a feeling that they, too, could contribute to the war effort. Constance is a bit down in the dumps, especially when she realizes at check-in that she no longer has a profession to declare when asked. Youngest sister Fleurette is up for everything, especially when she thinks that she might use her flair for entertaining to help the troops. And Norma isn’t easily dissuaded when the sisters discover on their first day that she has been employed to teach not about messenger pigeons but about how to dress and prepare small game. Like pigeons.

This whole situation is clearly a setup for Constance to hit her stride again (which she soon does, reluctantly, when the camp matron suffers an injury), but Stewart isn’t content to stop there (even though this probably would be enough to satisfy fans). Instead, she introduces a new character, Beulah Binford, a real-life figure who arrives at the camp and bunks with the Kopp sisters. Beulah has aspirations for using National Service School training as a springboard to overseas service in France. She comes to Chevy Chase under an assumed name, and through a series of flashbacks, readers learn just who she really is and why she’s so desperate to escape her checkered past.

Beulah’s story offers a dark mirror to the Kopp sisters’ own, as her history reveals how the intersections of gender and class drastically reduced a young woman’s ability to overcome the accident of her birth, not to mention her own missteps. At the same time, Stewart continues to round out her portrayal of Constance, Norma and Fleurette, crafting them into bold and remarkable characters with whom readers will be delighted to spend even more time.