MY LITERARY BFF

MAGGIE HOPE

Throughout the month of April, you can catch up on my posts for this year’s challenge as well as all my alphabet offerings from previous years on my Blogging from A to Z page HERE.

When I read a great novel or a series of novels, sometimes I wish I could step into the book and join the world experienced by the characters. I just know that if I were there, I’d feel at home and contribute positively to the plot. I think it is those characters that keep me returning to works by the same author and even read those same novels over and over again. For this year’s challenge, I plan to visit those characters we all know and love. Those characters that we want to step off the page because we know that if they did, we’d be best friends forever. Today, please meet Maggie Hope.

With eight books in the series, author, Susan Elia MacNeal introduces us to a character that I would love to meet. Of course I would have to time travel to the 1940s when the world was at war. Margaret Hope, Maggie to her friends and colleagues is a woman raised in America and is a math whiz living in London and working as a codebreaker and spy during WWII. In these wonderful novels, our heroine interacts with a Who’s Who of Great Britain and America during the war, aiding the Allies in the war against the Nazis. I think this would make a great television series. Actually, Maggie Hope kind of reminds me of Agent Carter.

Just who is Maggie Hope? She is an auburn-haired beauty with some mystery surrounding her parents, Edmund and Clara Hope. We learn from Maggie’s knowledge that Edmund taught at the London School of Economics and Clara was an accomplished pianist. They were killed in a car accident shortly after her birth. She was then sent to the United States to live with her father’s sister, Edith Hope, who taught at Wellesley. Maggie grew up to be a mathematician, and was scheduled to enter M.I.T., when she was informed that her grandmother Hope had died, leaving Maggie a house in London. Unable to sell the property, Maggie grew to love London, especially all its layers of history. She took in boarders, and decided to work for the British war effort. Maggie is still a British citizen, even if her American accent amuses her British friends. Her background may not be what she has always thought but through Susan Elia MacNeal’s eight engaging stories, we see Maggie playing an important part in the intelligence side of World War II and uncovering a lot about herself.