Three years before women in New York could legally vote in 1918, a war in Europe entered its second year. The Applebaum sisters had inherited Arcadia Rare Bookshop from their widowed father before the Titanic’s voyage to the bottom of the sea. Olivia, the eldest at “nearly the wrong side of 24,” takes charge of her younger siblings: 20-year-old Daphne and 18-year-old Celia. In this period piece, Arcadia is located near Astor Place on Manhattan’s 4th Avenue, the historic Book Row.

The poorly worded 1873 Comstock Act prohibited mailing “obscene” materials, leaving the definition open to interpretation by Anthony Comstock and his henchmen. Once empowered, Comstock took this to mean distributing what he considered obscene. A 50% financial incentive of fines collected spurs him to arrest countless citizens as he sets eyes on the booksellers and printers of Book Row. The “odious fool” earned the respect of none and ire from all.

"The unapologetic feminist undertone in THE SISTERS OF BOOK ROW belts a proud anthem of gender equality and women’s rights in an era when there were none, boldly challenging patriarchy."

When a Comstock-led raid strikes a print shop adjoining Arcadia, a mysterious package is stashed into the throwaway box, a crate at the Arcadia entrance for customers to donate or skim used books of little value. As an antiquarian restorer, Olivia recognizes the velum-bound volume as a collection of papyrus fragments written in ancient Greek. Had Comstock’s goons been searching for the manuscript believed to be the poetry of Sappho, whom Plato dubbed the 10th muse, thinking that her Words More Naked Than Flesh was pornography?

Meanwhile, Celia is a devout follower of Margaret Sanger, a Comstock nemesis who had been arrested. Celia distributes brochures about women’s health and family limitation, a euphemism for birth control, which makes her a criminal defined by the Comstock Act. She uses the throwaway box as a receptacle for illicit messages and believes the manuscript may be from Sanger, who is set to flee America to avoid imprisonment.

The mystery thread in this tapestry volleys readers’ attention between two scenarios for Comstock’s focus on Arcadia. Olivia and Celia each believe she is the cause of Arcadia being in Comstock’s crosshairs.

Shelley Noble’s enlightening historical novels remind readers that freedoms readily available now were not availed to most a mere century ago. The unapologetic feminist undertone in THE SISTERS OF BOOK ROW belts a proud anthem of gender equality and women’s rights in an era when there were none, boldly challenging patriarchy.