Books Archive

The Bookbinder of Jericho (September 2023)

By Pip Williams

September 15, 2023

What is lost when knowledge is withheld?

In 1914, when the war draws the young men of Britian away to fight, it is the women who must keep the nation running.  Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho.  Peggy is intelligent, ambitious and dreams of going to Oxford University, but for most of her life she has been told her job is to bind the books, not read them.  Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has.  She is extraordinary but vulnerable.  Peggy needs to watch over her.

When refugees arrive from the devastated cities of Belgium, it sends ripples through the community and through the sisters’ lives.  Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can use her intellect and not just her hands, but as war and illness reshape her world, it is love, and the responsibility that comes with it, that threaten to hold her back.