Runaway girls

As the first female deputy sheriff in Bergen County, New Jersey, Constance Kopp has responsibility for the female prisoners. And she thinks there are way too many of them. In Amy Stewart's Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions (2017), the third novel in this excellent series, Constance is troubled by the fact that a runaway boy is just a runaway boy, while a runaway girl is a criminal, or at least treated as one.

Her prisoners include Edna, a young woman who believes the United States will be pulled into the war in Europe (the year is 1916) and, wanting to make a contribution, runs away from home to work in a munitions plant. Minnie, 16, runs away from home with a man who promises to marry her but doesn't. Her parents don't want her back, and now she faces years in a reformatory until she reaches adulthood.

Constance must really put her convictions to the test, however, when 18-year-old Fleurette, her youngest sister (actually her own daughter from being seduced as a teenager), runs away from home to join a vaudeville troupe. Her other sister, Norma, wants to bring Fleurette back by force, if necessary. Constance is torn.

Stewart bases her novels not just on a real person but on actual newspaper accounts from the period. Much of what takes place in Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions actually happened, as Stewart shows at the end of the book. Her fiction fills in the blanks with remarkable success.

I have been impressed by each of the Constance Kopp adventures so far and look forward to reading the next one.