The Last Government Girl

Winner of the Maryland Writer's Association 2014 Novel Award. In the summer of 1944, Edwina, known as Eddie, a young high school teacher of English and German travels to Washington to work for the war effort unaware a killer is there, targeting government girls. And he's closer than she could ever imagine. Eddie finds Washington crowded and exciting, a city at war, where folks act as if each day is their last. She rushes at life, longing to live her own version of Casablanca, believing the only enemies are Over There, the Nazis, Hitler, Hirohito. And that every man in uniform is a hero. The Last Government Girl, filled with heart-pounding tension, is peopled with extraordinarily alive characters, a mulatto crime photographer battling Jim Crow laws, a bootlegger's niece enjoying stolen moonshine money, and a beautiful Jewish department store heiress hiding a terrible secret.Ellen Herbert's fiction has won a PEN Fiction, a Virginia Fiction Fellowship, and many other awards. See ellenherbert.info