Charity Girl, (Paperback)

<p>During World War I, seventeen-year-old Frieda Mintz secures a job at a Boston department store and strikes out on her own, escaping her repressive Jewish mother and marriage to a wealthy widower twice her age. Determined to find love on her own terms, she is intoxicated by her newfound freedom and the patriotic fervor of the day. That is, until a soldier reports her as his last sexual contact, sweeping her up in the government's wartime crusade against venereal disease. Quarantined in a detention center, Frieda finds in the Home's confines a group of brash, unforgettable women who help her see the way to a new kind of independence. </p><p>Charity Girl is based on a little-known chapter in American history that saw fifteen thousand women across the nation incarcerated. Like When the Emperor Was Divine, Lowenthal's poignant, provocative novel will leave readers moved - and astonished by the shameful facts that inspired it. </p>

Publishers Weekly,Focusing on a little-known WWI-era government campaign to imprison women who'd contracted "social diseases," Lowenthal (The Same Embrace; Avoidance) follows the travails of a 17-year-old Boston girl as she's put through the system's wringer. Frieda Mintz is a bundle wrapper at a department store living on her own when she meets Felix Morse, an army private. After a date at a Red Sox game, they sleep together. Not long after, Mrs. Sprague from the "Committee on Prevention of Social Evils Surrounding Military Camps," hounds Frieda at her workplace because Felix, during an inspection that uncovers he has an infection, names Frieda as his "last contact." After her case of "the whites" flares up and she loses her job, Frieda follows Felix to Camp Devens, where she's arrested and put into quarantine. Behind bars, she befriends Flossie Collins, and the two are sent to a detention camp, where they undergo crude medical treatment and perform mandatory manual labor alongside a host of other quarantined women. As her body heals and conditions worsen at the detention center, tensions rise to a wrenching climax. Lowenthal ably captures the transformation of a na?ve adolescent into a woman in his provocative story. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Book format	Paperback
Fiction/nonfiction	Fiction
Genre	Literature & Fiction
Publication date	January, 2008
Pages	336
Subgenre	Historical
Series title	No Series
Number in series	0
Edition	1
Publisher	HarperCollins
Original languages	English
Language	English
Is collectible	N
Character	Frieda Mintz
Recording time	0 min
Retail packaging	Single Piece
Assembled product dimensions (l x w x h)	5.43 x 0.80 x 8.25 in
Assembled product weight	0.72 lb
Bisac subject heading	Fiction