Brianna Labuskes’s 2025 historical novel, The Boxcar Librarian, continues her focus on book-centric narratives, following titles such as The Librarian of Burned Books and The Lost Book of Bonn. Labuskes is a USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestselling author of historical fiction and psychological thrillers. The Boxcar Librarian unfolds across three distinct timelines, weaving together the stories of three women whose lives become connected by a mobile library in Montana. In 1936, a Works Progress Administration editor named Millie Lang is sent to investigate a potentially sabotaged state guidebook. A decade earlier, idealistic librarian Alice Monroe establishes a library in a train car to serve remote communities. And in the 1910s and ’20s, a miner’s daughter named Colette Durand embarks on a years-long quest for revenge after her father’s murder.

Inspired by the true histories of Missoula’s Lumberman’s Library and the Federal Writers’ Project, the novel uses its multi-generational plot to explore the deep impact of literature on marginalized communities and the violent realities of American labor history. The narrative examines how corporate monopolies corrupt political and social institutions, framing its central conflicts around Corporate Power as a Means to Exploit the Vulnerable. As the characters navigate these oppressive systems, the novel argues for Fostering Connection Through Storytelling as literature acts as an essential tool for connection, resistance, and survival. Finally, through Colette’s long and difficult journey, the story offers a critical look at how the pursuit of retribution can become a self-destructive force, exploring The Self-Destructive Nature of Revenge.

This guide refers to the 2025 William Morrow e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, death, death by suicide, mental illness, sexual harassment, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

In 1936, in Washington, DC, Millie Lang works as an editor for the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), a New Deal program creating state travel guides. After she punches the politically connected Foxwood Hastings for sexually assaulting a colleague, her supervisor, Katherine Kellock, reassigns her to an out-of-the-way location to prevent her from being fired. Katherine sends Millie to Missoula, Montana, to manage a field office whose staff has submitted blank forms and nonsensical essays. Katherine suspects the substandard submission is the result of sabotage by Montana’s powerful Copper Kings, who wish to suppress their history of union-busting, and she tasks Millie with uncovering the truth before the next deadline. The narrative then shifts to Missoula in 1924, where 19-year-old librarian Alice Monroe, daughter of the powerful Mayor Clark Monroe, dreams of bringing books to isolated lumberjack and mining camps. She conceives of the Boxcar Library, a repurposed train car traveling on existing company rails. Despite opposition from socialite Julia Walker, who fears books will incite worker unrest, Alice secures a boxcar from mine owner Logan Rutherford and funding from Julia’s own son, the roguish war veteran Sidney Walker. Meanwhile, a third timeline begins in 1914, following Colette Durand, the daughter of a French-Canadian miner, union organizer, and aspiring Shakespearean actor, Claude Durand. After Claude is murdered on their porch in 1921 by two hired guns, Colette, armed with a shotgun, leaves her home in Hell Raisin’ Gulch to hunt them down.

Colette’s two-year search leads her to one of the killers, Petey Severson, who confesses he was hired not by the mining company, but by Mayor Clark Monroe of Missoula; he also names the second man as Murdoch “Mac” MacTavish, the mayor’s right-hand man. Armed with this knowledge, Colette travels to Missoula, where Alice Monroe is interviewing candidates for the Boxcar Library. Disguising herself, Colette impresses Alice with her deep knowledge of books and understanding of the workers, and Alice hires her on the spot. Spurred on by a desire for adventure, Alice decides to join Colette on the library’s inaugural journey. The library is a success, but the trip is unsettled when a masked bandit boards the train and threatens Alice, only to be driven off by Colette. Sidney Walker also begins following the train in his car. The journey culminates when Mac MacTavish arrives to bring Alice home, informing her that her father has had a severe heart attack. Before they can leave, Colette confronts Mac, accusing him of her father’s murder. Just then, Finn Benson, a charismatic union organizer Colette knows, arrives. Mac admits he was present at Claude’s death but denies pulling the trigger. Colette lowers her gun, deciding that she can’t kill Mac without knowing the full story. Finn then shoots and kills Mac, claiming to do so on Colette’s behalf. He plants a weapon on Mac’s body to stage a self-defense claim that the local sheriff accepts. A horrified Alice realizes Colette used the library as part of a revenge plot.

In the aftermath of Mac’s death, Alice returns to Missoula to find that her father has also died. Wracked with guilt, she develops severe agoraphobia and soon stops leaving her home. Colette, meanwhile, discovers that Finn Benson is a spy for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, and he has been hunting her to cover his tracks. With Alice’s help, Colette fakes her own death and goes into hiding. Years later, in 1936, Millie arrives in Missoula and begins her investigation. Her staff includes noir author Oscar Dalton, secretary Flo Marner, cartographer Professor Thomas Lyon, and photographer Sidney Walker—the same man who followed Alice on the Boxcar Library’s inaugural journey. Millie’s suspicion falls on Sidney, who is hostile and evasive. Her investigation reveals that Colette Durand, the boxcar librarian, supposedly died twice: once over a decade ago, according to Oscar’s memory of old news clippings, and again from the flu just a few years ago in the small town of Condon—a town Sidney deliberately removed from their FWP travel itinerary. Millie confronts Alice, who confesses that she and Sidney sabotaged the FWP guide—not to protect corporate interests, but to protect Colette, who was still alive and living in Condon; Professor Lyon had unknowingly rediscovered her, and they feared the guide would expose her location to Finn Benson, now a powerful aide to a US senator.

Millie, Alice, and Sidney drive to Colette’s cabin at Bluebird Pond to warn her, arriving just as Finn Benson confronts her. He was lured there by a note from Colette reading, “I found it.” Inside, Colette holds Finn at gunpoint. Alice and Millie reveal their new theory: Claude Durand was killed not because he discovered that Finn was a spy, but because he found proof that Finn was embezzling vast sums of money from the Anaconda Company, a crime the Company would kill him for. Alice pleads with Colette not to throw her life away on bloody revenge, quoting Shakespeare to appeal to the memory of her father. As Colette wavers, Millie realizes the evidence must be hidden within one of Claude’s books. She takes a knife to the binding of As You Like It—the source of Claude’s last words—and discovers forged balance sheets proving Finn’s theft. Enraged, Finn takes Alice hostage with a dagger. In the ensuing standoff, Millie grabs a heavy volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and knocks Finn unconscious.

With the evidence exposed, Finn Benson’s political career is destroyed, and he is later found dead of an apparent suicide, finally freeing Colette from her life on the run. The Montana FWP office successfully publishes its guide, and Millie, having found a home and community, stays in Missoula to write a new book on the women of Montana. Freed from the guilt she carried for her father’s and Mac’s deaths, Alice begins to heal. Sidney leaves a copy of Little Women on her porch with a photograph of her on the Boxcar Library roof and a note encouraging her to live. She finally decides to leave Missoula, and Sidney joins her. They spend five years traveling the country together before he is a photographer in World War II. Colette remains at her cabin, starting her own bookmobile and finding peace. Decades later, after a long and full life with Sidney, an elderly Alice dies peacefully in her sleep during a Montana blizzard, holding the photograph from the boxcar roof, content that she had finally learned to sail her own ship.