Local author, Park School librarian, and Newbery Medal winner Laura Amy Schlitz has set her latest novel, The Hired Girl, in 1911 Baltimore. The book tells the story of fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, who runs away from a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania to become a hired girl for six dollars a week in a grand home on Eutaw Place.
In her diary, Joan recounts visits to Druid Hill Park and the grand department stores of Howard Street; she attends Corpus Christi Church on Mount Royal Avenue. Through Joan’s experiences, Schlitz explores feminism and housework, religion and literature, love and loyalty.
Schlitz has been lauded as a “master of children’s literature” by The New York Times Book Review. The Hired Girl, for readers 12 and up, has received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Horn Book.
The Park School has created a driving tour of the sights from The Hired Girl, which includes stops in Bolton Hill.
Here’s the video trailer for the book:
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