The End of Innocence

September 15, 2014
This engaging debut from Jordan tells the love story of two college students who pursue their romance as World War I begins. At a party, Wils Brandl meets Helen Brooks, an aspiring writer from a prominent New England family, and immediately gets on her bad side by criticizing one of her poems. Meanwhile, Wils's rakish cousin Riley pursues Helen romantically, despite rumors that he's engaged to a woman in England. This is to Wil's chagrin, as he begins to fall for Helen himself. Both Wils and Helen are tormented by entitled fellow student Arnold Archer, whose politician father hopes to rise to a position in Congress on a wave of anti-German sentiment. Archer stirs up suspicion that Wils is a spy for the Kaiser who is currently waging war in Europe. As the inevitable happens and Wils and Helen fall in love and marry, Wils is summoned back to Europe where he fights on the side of the Germans, while Riley fights for the British. Jordan does a terrific job of contrasting the superficial formalities of the initial chapters depicting New England social life with the grueling realities of life in the trenches. Also on display is her knack for taking what at first seem like throwaway or background details and making them central to the story's last third, set in Boston following the Great Depression.

September 1, 2014
As the U.S. sits on the sidelines in the early days of World War I, Harvard students with ties to Britain and Germany prepare to go to war in this unusual historical novel. Jordan's debut tells the story of a group of Harvard classmates and upper-crust Boston families struggling with loyalty to their countries of origin and to their alma mater as WWI heats up in Europe in 1914. The novel centers around Helen Brooks, an incoming freshman at Radcliffe who has failed to secure a husband. Helen's eccentric family is accepted as part of Boston's elite in spite of her mother's radicalism. Helen, a talented writer and editor, is admitted to an editing class at Harvard taught by professor Charles Copeland, a friend of her father's. There, she meets a pair of cousins, British-born Rhyland Cabot Spencer, or Riley, and his German cousin, Wilhem von Lutzow Brandl, Wils for short. When one of their German classmates is found dead, suspicion falls on patriotic students bent on stoking anti-German sentiment. Wils is suspected of being a spy and realizes he will have to leave Boston soon. Although Riley initially fixes Helen's attention, she slowly finds herself falling for Wils, in spite of her own complicated feelings about the war. "Men start wars," she tells her father. "[T]hey die, and women are sad." The book is a thoughtful look at a turning point in world history, but the relationships between friends and cousins on opposite sides of the conflict are overly simplistic. Wils and Riley, for example, seem little troubled by their divided loyalties to Britain and Germany. The plot, too, is at times too pat, especially once the cousins reach the battlefields of Belgium. Still, Helen is a sympathetic and complicated main character. Her strengths and weaknesses keep the reader's attention, making this a worthwhile read.

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