Captain Lucy and Lieutenant Bob

Captain Lucy #1

by Aline Havard, Unknown Author

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1918

About the author

Marie Aline Havard is the author of the Captain Lucy series.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.