Margo is everyone’s favorite worker at the Carlile Public Library; she’s friendly, helpful and caring. But she’s hiding a dark past: Margo is really Jane, a former nurse wanted by the law for killing her patients. Patricia, the new reference librarian and failed writer, discovers Margo’s deadly secret, but rather than turn her in to the authorities, she decides to turn Margo’s story into a new book to revive her writing career.
This is at the heart of writer and librarian Laura Sim’s new book, How Can I Help You.
Sims is the author of the novel LOOKER and an award winning poet, with four poetry collections published. She works part-time as a reference librarian and her library is partially what inspired her new book.
“When I really got in there and absorbed the setting, and my encounters with people, I realized this is a perfect setting for a novel,” she said in a recent What We’re Reading interview.
Another inspiration for How Can I Help You came from an episode of the Criminal podcast featuring the serial killer Jane Toppan, who killed patients while she was a nurse in the late 1800s. Sims used this backstory to create her character Margo.
How Can I Help You notably features professions associated with helpfulness and care: nurses and librarians. “I like playing with those roles that are associated with women and kind of turning them inside out,“ explained Sims.
I wanted to overturn the romanticized images and ideas many of us hold about the library.Writer and librarian Laura Sims
Aside from the drama of the story, Sims wanted her portrayal of the library to be realistic.
“I wanted to overturn the romanticized images and ideas many of us hold about the library,” she said. “It is a community center. It is lively. It’s one of the only institutions I can think of that is welcoming to everyone. We help people who’ve been left behind by a lot of other institutions.”
Learn more about Laura Sims at her website.
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