The Lost Girl of Craven County

by Emily Matchar

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Jewish Fiction; Southern

Synopsis

Brought together by chance, bound together by secrets.

A decade into the Great Depression, Millicent Green is a twenty-five-year-old "old maid" living with her marriage-obsessed mother and domineering older brother in the stiflingly small Jewish community of New Bern, North Carolina. Smart and prickly, she’s struggling to find her place in the world following the loss of her beloved younger brother, and with him, her dreams for the future.

One humid August day, Millie is sent to run an errand and discovers a young woman unconscious on the ground. This mystery woman, mute and without identification, will upend Millie’s life. Together, they set out on a quest that will lay bare some of the twentieth century’s most shameful episodes.

From a historic river town to the hinterlands of rural North Carolina, The Lost Girl of Craven County delves into the impossibility of burying secrets forever. It’s a story of love, loss, and—above all—the indelible, world-moving power of female friendship.

Release date: April 14, 2026

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 320

Sample

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Chapter 1

New Bern, North Carolina

August 1939

I was three weeks past my twenty-fifth birthday when I discovered the woman lying in the gravel behind my family's pickle warehouse. Twenty-five: an old maid by the standards of Jewish New Bern, which was why I was the one sent to fetch a jar of pickles that afternoon.

If I hadn't gone-if my mother had remembered to ask Jesse to bring the pickles, or if she'd decided to make do without them-my whole life would have turned out differently. But that's the way things go, isn't it? Life can hinge on a thing as silly as a jar of pickles.

The other women in the family-my mother, aunt, sister-in-law, and three cousins-were gathered in our parlor, cooing over my cousin Violet's wedding dress hanging on the wire dress frame (ivory rayon with a smocked bodice and leg-of-mutton sleeves; Violet would look like an overgrown child in a nightdress).

What would Millie care about a wedding dress? the others must have thought. She's never getting married! Send her off for the pickles.

I was happy to go.

The pickle warehouse, an enormous rectangle of painted brick on the east side of Craven Street, overlooked the river. It was mid-August, mid-afternoon, white hot, with ragged clouds drooping in a pale sky. A fishy smell drifted up from the docks, mingling with the tang of vinegar, which grew stronger as I approached the warehouse.

Prickling with sweat, I picked my way across the expanse of crushed-oyster-shell gravel where the farm trucks parked each morning to unload their vegetables. To the side of the warehouse's massive metal doors stood the roof-high brine tank, where cucumbers were stored in salty water until they could be moved inside. Next to the tank was a double row of wooden pickle barrels awaiting pickup, bound for the rail yard. Any decent grocery in the Southeast stocked Felix's Famous Pickles. Sweet, sour, and dill, chowchow and relish.

Something-the barest hint of something-behind the pickle barrels caught my eye. I turned. A patch of pink. Then a movement. A soft sound. A moan?

It could have been a rabid dog, or a hobo blind with rotgut, but for some reason-perhaps because I'm as impetuous as everyone says-I didn't hesitate. I strode straight ahead and peered over the barrel.

There, lying on the crushed oyster shells, was a woman.

I gasped, my heart juddering, and took a step backwards.

She lay full-length in the shadow between the pickle barrels and the warehouse wall. Her face rolled towards me and her eyes fluttered open. The bridge of her nose was scraped, and her chin bruised purple.

"Hello? Are you all right?" I said.

The woman gave no answer. She was wet, utterly soaked through. Her pale hair was plastered to her forehead-it was so short I might have thought she was a boy, except her wet dress lay so heavily on her body I could see her little breasts and her hip bones poking out.

Only it wasn't actually a dress. It was a kind of garment I'd never seen before. On the top it appeared to be a toga, something like Julius Caesar might have worn-white, and tied in a knot at her shoulder. On the bottom it resembled nothing so much as the billowy pants of a harem girl in The Arabian Nights, its folds drenched and flattened against the gravel.

She moaned again. I looked around, to see if there was anyone who might help. But we were alone.

Could she be one of the warehouse workers? But the workers wore ordinary clothes and aprons. And anyhow, it was Sunday. A day off for the workers, though not for Jesse, who was likely inside doing inventory.

I leaned over slowly, so as not to startle her. "Can you stand up?" I asked.

She just stared at me blankly, her eyes the strange light gray of puddles on the sidewalk after a hard rain. Her face was as oval as a porcelain doll's, and just as white, though with spots of hectic color blooming on her cheeks. Her short hair was the color of wet sand. She could have been thirteen or thirty.

Perhaps she'd been hit by a car and knocked senseless? Maybe she'd fallen in the river and bumped her head? I knelt beside her, the oyster gravel prickling my bare knees. If I'd taken the nurse's training course my mother kept suggesting, I'd know what to do.

"Let me go get help," I said.

But as soon as I attempted to stand, she moaned and reached out for me with one thin wet arm, like a sick child reaching for her mother.

"I'll be right back," I said. "The doctor's clinic is just down on Pollock Street."

But again she reached for me and moaned so distressingly that I knelt back down. I could feel the North Carolina sun beginning to singe the back of my neck.

"Can you walk?"

She simply stared up at me again, her face as blank as a baby's. I wondered if she was deaf and quickly clapped my hands above her head to test the theory. She startled. Not deaf. I felt a small flash of triumph. Jesse would never have thought of that.

I picked up one of the girl-woman's hands and grasped it between my own. It was small and boneless feeling, and as cold as a fish. I tugged, attempting to get her into a sitting position.

In one quick motion she sat up, gasping, and began to cough. The effort caused a bead of blood to ooze from her swollen lower lip. Her cheeks grew even pinker.

I thought of Auggie, coughing so hard he turned purple. I had to shake my head quickly to remove the image from my mind.

After regaining her breath, the woman reached for my hand and pulled herself up. She stood for a moment, leaning against the hot bricks of the warehouse wall, gazing around herself in a curious way, as if she'd never seen her surroundings before. She must have hit her head. After another moment, she stepped out from behind the pickle barrels with the delicacy of a ballerina. She smiled at me despite her swollen lip, and dipped her head in what seemed like a nod of thanks.

"Let's take you to the doctor?" I asked.

No response. Of course not.

I tried to pantomime "doctor," feigning to take my own pulse. But the girl-woman simply looked at me wide-eyed.

"All right, then," I said. "You can come home with me."

I thought about pantomiming "home," but I couldn't think of what to imitate. Perhaps my mother, shoving a brisket in the oven while using her free hand to wag her finger at me? Instead, I merely gave the stranger a smile and held out my hand. "Come," I said. "We'll figure it out."

If I'd known then what I know now, well . . . But that's the thing of it, I suppose: If we knew at the beginning what we know at the end, nothing very interesting would ever happen in the middle, would it?


The Swiss Protestants who founded New Bern laid out the city in the shape of a cross, which you might think would have put us Jews off settling here. Yet here we’ve been for a hundred years, on this thumb of Craven County between the Trent and Neuse Rivers, a village within a village. People call Middle Street, the vertical part of the cross, “Little Jerusalem,” on account of the number of Jewish-owned shops. We number no more than eighty, with fewer every year as more boys light out for Raleigh or Charleston or Baltimore for better work. Those remaining grow more and more desperate for gossip-I knew if any Jewish New Bernian spotted me with the stranger, the entire community would know in a matter of minutes, thanks to the party-line telephone and Mrs. Lefkowitz’s extremely quick dialing finger.

Glancing around, I led the stranger down Middle Street, her cold hand in mine. She walked with a high, deliberate step, leaving a trail of little wet footprints. Being Sunday morning and hot as the devil, there were only a few people at Middle and Pollock Streets, normally the busiest corner in downtown New Bern. A lady with a parasol-Shirley Stucky's mother, I thought-turned to give me and the stranger a beady-eyed stare. I gave her a too-big smile, and she looked away quickly. The mute girl didn't seem to notice. She was staring around in what seemed to be wonderment, her eyes going in all directions. You'd think she'd never seen a dogwood tree or a fire hydrant or an advertisement painted on a brick wall (Drink New Bern's Own Pepsi-Cola: Worth a Dime, Costs a Nickel!). We passed the Cohens' furniture store, my aunt and uncle's laundry, the narrow building where old Mr. Gelman repaired watches and jewelry, the fishmonger's run by my cousin's husband. As we passed the Marie Antoinette Boutique, I saw the shadow of Sophie Zucker-Sophie Cohen-in the window, tugging a dress off a mannequin.

The Marie Antoinette. Why would anyone name a clothing store after a queen who lost her head? But far be it from me to disagree with a graduate of Sweet Briar College.

I looked more closely at the stranger. She was almost certainly a young woman, not a girl, I decided. There was also something mature about the set of her jaw, despite her gawping expression. Her garment had nearly dried and now looked even more billowy and bizarre. Could she be a nun? Perhaps she'd lost her habit, and this was nun underwear? Maybe I should take her up the block to Saint Paul's and ask if they'd lost a sister?

By now I was nearly at my house. I pointed to it as we approached and patted my chest.

The woman looked up at our plain blue two-story house and smiled so big you'd think we were arriving at a castle. She nodded as if she understood.

We climbed the brick steps, and I swung open the front door. The woman, in her strange outfit, followed me silently.

The ladies sat in the parlor, holding glasses of sherbet, chattering like parrots. As soon as I stepped inside, the stranger clinging like a shadow behind me, they went silent. Fanny's eyes widened in concern. Violet wrinkled her nose. Lizzy, who'd been nursing one of the twins, nearly dropped him as her hands flew up to button her dress. Bea started to say something, but before she could, my mother heaved herself to her feet and swung her square body towards me. Her eyes narrowed.

"Millie," she said finally. "I sent you for pickles."

Chapter 2

All at once the parlor was a frenzy of activity. My mother, fearsomely efficient as always, swept the wedding dress into the back bedroom and brought down several old towels to lay on the rug in case the stranger's garment dripped. Violet and her sisters, Bea and Lizzy, and my sister-in-law, Fanny, made a circle around the stranger, examining her the way farmers might examine a cow at auction.

"You found her behind the pickle warehouse?" demanded Bea, my oldest cousin. Bea never asks-she demands. "Is she a thief?"

"Does she look like she could lift a barrel of pickles?" I scoffed.

The stranger stood in a dignified way, smiling tolerantly. Her hair, fully dried, was the color of cornsilk, the kind of hair you normally only see on small children. It stood out around her head like fluff on a dandelion. I noticed she wore a brooch pinned to the folds of her garment at her bosom. It was a gray metal flower with the petals folded in on themselves. In the center was a bloodred stone.

"Is she one of the Kirby girls?" asked my aunt, who'd just entered the room, squinting. She carried a coffee cake on one of my mother's blue-and-white china platters, which she set on the sideboard along with the Toll House cookies Fanny had baked. "There's always a Kirby girl getting into trouble, isn't there?"

My aunt Zora is my father's sister, though you'd think she and my mother were twins, with their matching square figures and jaws. She runs the business side of Adlon's Laundry-my uncle Abe does the actual washing-and she prides herself on her cleverness. "You can't get anything by me" is her favorite sentence.

"Couldn't be," said Bea. "The Kirby girls all have red hair."

My aunt's nostrils flared slightly, like a hound scenting game. "Is this some Masonic nonsense?"

"Why would a woman be wearing a Masonic outfit?" Lizzy pointed out. Lizzy is the middle daughter and the sensible one in the family, the one who clips cost-saving recipes from Ladies' Home Journal and talks Bea down when she's in a snit.

"You never know," said Aunt Zora darkly. She hates to be wrong.

The stranger was looking around the room with wide, fascinated eyes, as if our parlor were an opium den. My family's parlor was certainly nothing out of the ordinary: old-fashioned peach-striped wallpaper hung with portraits of my father and Auggie, a dark-green chesterfield, a faux Chinese-style sideboard, and an oriental rug my mother had brought with her as a young bride from South Carolina. I'd spent hours of my youth on the chesterfield, reading books about children in faraway places-Kim, Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden-a plate of shortbread or oatmeal cookies balanced on my stomach.

"Why is she here, anyway?" said Violet peevishly. She was sore to have the attention off her, after waiting so long in her older sisters' shadows to have her own turn in an ugly wedding dress. She'd wanted to have a "bridal shower," like she'd read about in film magazines, but my mother and Aunt Zora put the nix on that right away-"What, you want to invite the Evil Eye?"-so the dress-viewing party was the compromise. She'd begged for a Hollywood theme and was dressed for the occasion in a lurid green gown with lace cap sleeves, which I recognized as Aunt Zora's old bathroom curtains.

"What was I supposed to do, leave her lying behind the pickle barrels?" I said. "She's probably hit her head or something."

"She looks all right to me, except for her chin," Violet said with a sniff.

"Do you want me to fetch Dr. Dixon?" asked Fanny kindly, her soft German accent turning the W in "want" into a V. Unlike me, Lizzy, and Bea, Fanny had gamely dressed for the party in a pink dress with a bow at the collar, her hair arranged in old-fashioned finger waves.