The Liberty Scarf

After joining forces on their 2023 novel, The Castle Keepers, authors Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, Rachel McMillan are back with another collaborative book, The Liberty Scarf. Mainly set during the final year of World War I, we follow three different women working within the war, finding love along the way, and united by a recurring theme of hope via a special scarf. Though I don’t read much war fiction these days, I enjoyed this book quite a lot!

The Liberty Scarf is set up like an anthology of three novellas. First there is Iris, a woman who works at Liberty in London and aspires to design her own scarf. She meets Rex, a wounded soldier, who helps in her career ambitions. Then there is Geneviève, a French Canadian woman living in Maine who joins the US Army Signal Corps to work as a bilingual operator. She comes from a working class background, is more or less engaged to the wealthy Peter, and is finding friendship with a French man, Maxime. And finally there is Clara, a Belgian woman working as a nurse in Brussels but who is drawn to life’s stories. She tends to a violinist named Roman, quickly developing a fleeting romance limited to his time in her hospital. But as war continues to tear through Europe, will these six characters find lasting happiness?

Tropes & Narrative Devices:

• Three novellas as one full-length novel
• Partially epistolary
• Recurring scarf and poem motifs
• Third-person POV (Iris; Rex; Geneviève; Clara; Roman)

What I Liked:

• Loosely interconnected stories. Though the stories feel rather distinct from one another, with possibly no overlapping characters (for a while!), they do having recurring themes that glue them together. Iris, Geneviève, and Clara are connected by a Liberty scarf that holds special value to each. And while all three women are contributing to the war effort in some way, they also each find love with a soldier. Each of their stories ends on a cliffhanger… until the epilogue!
• Letters! All three sections have correspondence as a central portion of the characters’ relationship arcs. When Rex is called back to the frontlines, he and Iris write letters about their respective career wins. Geneviève and Maxime become friends while in France, and grow their friendship via letters, even as Geneviève worries about her relationship with her would-be fiancé, Peter. Clara and Roman fall in love when she tends to him as a nurse, bonding over their shared affinity for the arts. But letters are the only thing keeping them together after being driven apart.
• “Hope is the thing with feathers.” While the scarf is a recurring motif that the characters wear and cherish, the Emily Dickinson quote that inspired it is also an important theme that comes up again and again. As hopeless as war can feel, these characters cling to this poem and this quote as a guiding light amidst a dark time.

Audiobook

The audio version of The Liberty Scarf is narrated by Ann Marie Gideon, Gary Furlong, Caroline Hewitt, and Saskia Maarleveld. Each has an inviting speaking style and cadence, allowing listeners to get comfortable yet keeping interest alive throughout. I enjoyed the different accents used to make each character—whether English or French or Belgian—feel more authentic and vibrant. With a European setting, I loved hearing the different languages and accents from the myriad countries involved in the war.

Final Thoughts

The Liberty Scarf is a novel of hope, strength, and love no matter how dark the times become. I loved the format of three interrelated stories sharing recurring motifs and a hint of character connection at the end. Even as wars rage on today, this book offers some hope and love despite it all.

Special thanks to HarperCollins Focus, Harper Muse, Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, Rachel McMillan, Austenprose PR, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Liberty Scarf here – it’s available as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Liberty Scarf by Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, and Rachel McMillan
Audiobook Narrator	Ann Marie Gideon; Gary Furlong; Caroline Hewitt; Saskia Maarleveld
Audience	Adult
Genre	Historical Fiction
Setting	England; Maine; France; Belgium
Number of Pages	368
Format I Read	Audiobook and ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	November 19, 2024
Publisher	Harper Muse

Official Summary

From acclaimed authors Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, and Rachel McMillan comes an evocative, three-part novel about a thread of connection during World War I–a single scarf that links three extraordinary women, each battling societal expectations, enduring the devastations of war, and striving for personal growth amidst the chaos. The Liberty Scarf is a testament to the resilience of women and the enduring power of hope and unity in the harshest of times.

In the midst of a seemingly endless war, a scarf connects three women in the cold winter of 1917 . . .

London: As an ambitious scarf maker, Iris Braxton spends her days surrounded by color and luxury not often seen during the dark days of war that were promised to be over by Christmas. That promise has come and gone for three years with still no end in sight, and her days continue in a monotony of rations and threads while she spins a dream of becoming Liberty’s first female pattern designer. She hasn’t the time or interest in rakish soldiers, but the temporarily-on-leave Captain Rex Conrad is persistent–and before long his charm wins her over. But war is cruel, and, all too soon, Conrad leaves once more for the Front, but not before vowing to meet again in Strasbourg, France, the most magical of Christmas cities. Iris begins stitching small messages into each of the scarves she makes in hopes that one will find a way into Rex’s hands to let him know she’s thinking of him. And when she receives word that he’s wounded in Strasbourg, she rushes to his side. Along the way, she passes a woman wearing one of her scarves . . .

Maine: Geneviève Tremblay, a French-Canadian immigrant, is a telephone operator living in Lewiston, Maine. Her beau is a member of a prominent family who has helped to Americanize her in a community often unfriendly to Canadians. As part of this effort, she enlists in the US Army Signal Corps to serve as a bi-lingual operator. Along the way, she meets a French officer who makes her question whether losing her identity is too heavy a price for acceptance.

Belgium: Clara Janssens, a Flemish Nurse, and Roman Allaire, an Alsatian violinist, connect in a Brussels palace-turned-hospital far beyond their routine provincial and countryside lives–and the expectations in those towns. Their love of music creates a spark between them, but the destruction of battle and the transient nature of their relationship threatens the bond they have built. Still, the appearance of a kind stranger and the unexpected gift of a treasured scarf bind them long beyond their stolen moments and offer them a future brighter than they could have even hoped.

The Liberty Scarf is more than a piece of fabric–it’s a symbol of hope, resilience, and unity in the face of war, binding these three women together in an indelible bond. Experience their stories of love, sacrifice, and survival in this captivating novel from Aimie K. Runyan, J’nell Ciesielski, and Rachel McMillan.