True fiction

Writing novels based on real people and real events is nothing new. Writers do it all the time. Yet what Amy Stewart has done seems amazing to me. She has written an entire series of novels based on real people and real events.

Kopp Sisters on the March (2019) is the fifth novel in the series, which is now up to seven books, and she is still sticking mostly to the facts. In her Historical Notes at the end she explains which characters she invented and where she plays fast and loose with the truth. Conversations are, of course, invented. Yet amazingly most of the major characters are real and most of the significant events actually happened, even if not exactly as she describes.

Constance Kopp lost her groundbreaking job as a sheriff's deputy in Hackensack, N.J., after the election of a new sheriff, and now she is at a loss about what to do with her life. In 1917 there aren't that many opportunities for women in law enforcement. Along with her bossy sister, Norma, whose passion is homing pigeons, and her much younger sister, Fleurette (actually her daughter), whose passions are fashion and show business, Constance enrolls in a military-style training camp for women. With America's entry into the war in Europe becoming more and more likely, National Service Schools aim to train women for supporting roles, such as nursing.

When the camp's matron is injured, Constance takes charge with such authority that everyone accepts her as the proper leader. She begins to fashion her own training methods, which include self-defense and firearms skills.

Meanwhile the notorious Beulah Binford enrolls in the camp under a false name, hoping that nobody will realize she is the former prostitute involved in an infamous Richmond murder case.

Constance's story and Beulah's story take turns in Stewart's narrative until they merge and things really get interesting.

While not as exciting as some of the previous novels — there is no real mystery here — Kopp Sisters on the March entertains just the same.