Carnegie Library

Carnegie Library is where Madeline Zott begins to investigate her father’s past. Its phone books provide a lead to All Saints Boys Home, while the library’s rules and the librarian’s close supervision give this search a distinctly public, procedural setting.

Setting and Conduct

The library is presented as a place of organized research: its librarian guides Madeline through its interior to a shelf of phone books. The route passes readers who have turned down page corners and propped their feet on a neighboring chair. The librarian rebukes both, warning that she can bar them for life. Her strictness makes the institution more than a quiet backdrop; access to its resources comes with expectations about how those resources and shared spaces should be treated.

Madeline’s Search

Madeline asks for an address for a place in Iowa, and the librarian helps her locate telephone directories for the state. After considering possible names, Madeline finds All Saints Boys Home in the listings. The discovery gives her a specific institution to pursue, but the entry contains only a phone number, not an address. The directory therefore advances the investigation without completing it: a printed record confirms a lead while leaving the next step unresolved.

Records and Narrative Significance

The library’s role in the story is part of a wider reliance on documentary evidence. When the bishop of All Saints discusses the Calvin Evans Memorial Fund, he says that its existence can be proved through tax documents available at any decent library. The statement does not establish that those particular records are held at Carnegie Library, but it places libraries within the book’s broader landscape of public records and verifiable history. At Carnegie Library, that function begins on a child’s scale: Madeline uses an ordinary phone book to turn a family question into a search grounded in an institution’s name.