Excerpt from The War Librarian by Addison Armstrong, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Have a good day, Kathleen. I love you." She never let me leave without telling me that first.

"I love you, too."

I retraced my steps downstairs and stretched my long legs as I walked to the Metro. I stood on the crowded car to make room for pregnant women and families to sit, and then strode quickly to work, reveling in the feel of my hips opening and my hamstrings aching from my run.

When I arrived at the dentistry ten minutes before opening, the door was still locked. My eyes rolled back at me in the window's reflection. My boss, the dentist himself, was never on time. I spent most of my mornings making excuses for him, patients' vitriol directed at me rather than at the man at fault. I couldn't wait until I was at a place where rank was earned, a place where we worked together for a common goal.

A place like the Naval Academy.

Patience, Kathleen. I squeezed my fingers around the key to the office, and its jagged edges stung my skin. I'd done everything I could have to get an appointment to the Naval Academy: the application, the congressional recommendations, the physical fitness test. Now all I could do was focus on the work I had to do in this moment whether I got in or not.

I unlocked the office door and let myself in, busying myself with tasks long since familiar. I was supposed to be a bookkeeper, not a secretary, but that didn't mean half my working hours weren't spent fixing the thermostat, straightening chairs, and answering phone calls. I didn't mind the routine; it was the meaninglessness of it that I hated. That Soviet lunar robot Lunokhod could have done my job for me. It was rote. But it was a job that paid, so I settled myself behind the desk and opened the appointment book.

Dr. Lloyd rushed in only minutes after I sat down, and I plastered a smile on my face. "Good morning, Dr. Lloyd."

"Good morning, Kathleen."

It rankled me that I didn't deserve the moniker of Miss Kathleen in his eyes, much less Miss Carre. But hopefully I'd be Midshipman Carre soon, and if not, I'd try again next year in my last year of age eligibility. If that didn't work, I'd enlist. One way or another, I was going to do my duty in a way that mattered.

The day passed tediously, as it always did, so when the dentistry closed its doors two painful minutes after five o'clock, I shot off like a rocket. Surely the mail had come by now.

I fidgeted on the Metro and raced through the streets, ignoring the strain in my ankles as I ran across the uneven concrete sidewalks in my pumps. Inside the apartment building, I skidded to a stop in front of the row of metal mailboxes and unlocked the one that read Carre, Nellie R. with trembling hands. There it was, the heavy envelope from Annapolis, Maryland.

This was the letter.

I wanted to open it then and there, but too many other residents were bustling in and out of the mailroom. I sprinted up the stairs with the letter instead, throwing my purse onto the side table and halting in front of Nana in her armchair.

"Is that it?"

I nodded wordlessly at my grandmother as I slid the letter out, the blue inked eagle revealing the tips of his wings. The words on the letterhead, department of the navy, unfurled down my spine.

Miss Kathleen Carre
4 Martins Lane
Apt. 321
Washington, D.C.

I am pleased to offer you an appointment to the United States Naval Academy as a member of the Class of 1980.

The Class of 1980: the first class that would graduate from the Naval Academy with women alongside the men. The National Organization for Women had been campaigning for the service academies to admit women since I graduated from high school in 1972, and President Gerald Ford had signed the act into law in October of last year. I already knew the Naval Academy history backward and forward, and it had been all-male since its founding in 1845.

Excerpted from The War Librarian by Addison Armstrong. Copyright © 2022 by Addison Armstrong. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.