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Captain Lucy #1
Captain Lucy and Lieutenant Bob
The story begins with Lucy and Bob, who are bright, adventurous, and full of curiosity. They create an elaborate imaginary world where they assume the roles of captain and lieutenant, leading their own adventures and facing various challenges. Their imaginative play is vivid and engaging, and through their experiences, they learn important lessons about leadership, bravery, and friendship.
As they navigate their make-believe adventures, Lucy and Bob encounter various characters and situations that test their creativity and problem-solving skills. The novel combines elements of fantasy and reality, showing how the children’s imaginative play helps them understand and cope with real-life situations.
As they navigate their make-believe adventures, Lucy and Bob encounter various characters and situations that test their creativity and problem-solving skills. The novel combines elements of fantasy and reality, showing how the children’s imaginative play helps them understand and cope with real-life situations.
443 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1918
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November 6, 2020
Published in 1918, this is the first in a series of books about a girl growing up on the army base on Governors Island in New York Harbor, where her officer father is stationed. Lucy Gordon, who's 14, has an older brother who, as the book opens, is graduating from West Point almost a year early, thanks to the United States' recent entry into the Great War. Soon enough, "Lieutenant Bob" ships overseas, and the narrative then switches back and forth between the two siblings' points of view which is rather disconcerting. It gives the book the feel of two genres awkwardly spliced together: a family story for girls, and a boy's adventure story. At home, Lucy (who was given the honorary title of "Captain" by a member of her father's regiment) does Red Cross work, and helps her spoiled and petted visiting cousin Marian learn not to be peevish and fretful and not to indulge in imaginary illnesses. This is accomplished mostly by good times folding bandages with a crowd of girls, and long wintry walks to the island's seawall. Meanwhile in France, Bob, an aviator, is captured behind enemy lines, and his story mostly details his time in a German prison camp. This was presented in a slightly more realistic way than I'd expected (he does not engineer a brilliant and daring escape, for example).
As is usually the case for this kind of story, my interest in the book was mostly in its value as a social artifact; as a story it's middling at best. The real attraction for me was the portrayal of life on Governors Island, one of my favorite places in my adopted city. The army base closed in the 1950s, and the island was decommissioned as a Coast Guard facility in the 1990s. Today the island is a popular seasonal park, with lots of modern landscaping, great views and overpriced food trucks. But the part I like best is the historical area, where the rows of the officers' yellow frame houses border a shady park. It has the feel of some sleepy town or college campus very far upstate, far away from the enormous teeming city in which it's hidden. The houses and enlisted men's barracks still stand much as they are described in this book, but are almost entirely empty, and to me the place has a wistful, slighted haunted quality as though the memories of the people who went about their lives there are somehow still present.
As is usually the case for this kind of story, my interest in the book was mostly in its value as a social artifact; as a story it's middling at best. The real attraction for me was the portrayal of life on Governors Island, one of my favorite places in my adopted city. The army base closed in the 1950s, and the island was decommissioned as a Coast Guard facility in the 1990s. Today the island is a popular seasonal park, with lots of modern landscaping, great views and overpriced food trucks. But the part I like best is the historical area, where the rows of the officers' yellow frame houses border a shady park. It has the feel of some sleepy town or college campus very far upstate, far away from the enormous teeming city in which it's hidden. The houses and enlisted men's barracks still stand much as they are described in this book, but are almost entirely empty, and to me the place has a wistful, slighted haunted quality as though the memories of the people who went about their lives there are somehow still present.
Displaying 1 of 1 review