Storm Center

Alicia Hull is the well respected and long serving head librarian at Kenport's Free Public Library, a job to which she has dedicated her life ever since the death of her husband during WWI. Some angered citizens bring to city council's attention that the library has in its inventory a book called "The Communist Dream", which promotes the title subject. Based on those public complaints, council requests Alicia to pull the book from the library shelves. She initially agrees, then changes her mind, believing that she was initially swayed by the earlier news from council that they were finally proceeding with Alicia's long requested pet project of an addition of a child's wing to the library, and that council by this request is censoring books and quashing freedom of expression. Alicia admits to purchasing the book, but she also states that she believes the book's tenets are preposterous. She believes that only in allowing people to read it can they come to their own conclusion that it is indeed as preposterous as she believes. Using information from unwitting assistant librarian Martha Lockridge, young and ambitious councilor Paul Duncan, Martha's fiance, digs up information on Alicia's past activism, which includes membership in organizations that have Communist ties. Alicia does not deny those past associations, but states that she left each of those organizations when she learned of their Communist bent. Regardless, Paul uses that information to have Alicia fired since she still won't abide by council's request to pull the book. Such news labels Alicia publicly as a Communist, and she is generally ostracized by most of Kenport, even by many who had seen Alicia as a beloved community figure. Alicia, who initially wanted to fight against what is happening to her, decides she does not have the energy to do so. But as Paul uses his findings of Alicia's past to advance his own political aspirations at her expense, young Freddie Slater, who was one of the library's most ardent patrons and who has a somewhat unhappy home life if only because his father George Slater does not understand why Freddie would want to be immersed in a book when he can play sports like other "normal" boys instead, may make Alicia come to a different outlook based on his actions to her supposed Communism combined with the important role she has played in his life thus far.