Independent Reading Level: Grades 4-5
Awards: None

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss. ( )

Elizebeth Smith was born on August 26, 1892 in Huntington, Indiana. She went to college, majoring in English literature, and also studied Latin, Greek, and German. [As an article in the Smithsonian relates, Elizebeth’s father, a wealthy Indiana dairy farmer, hadn’t wanted her to pursue higher education. She went anyway, borrowing the tuition from him at a six percent interest rate.]

After graduating with a degree in English literature, she got a job in 1916 at Riverbank Laboratories in Geneva, Illinois, one of the first facilities in the U.S. founded to study cryptography. She was hired for a project related to the rumor of encrypted messages in the works of Shakespeare.

During World War I, several U.S. Government departments sent people to Riverbank for training. One such person was William F. Friedman, who would become Smith’s husband. In 1921, the now-married Friedmans left Riverbank to work for the U.S. War Department in Washington, D.C. as cryptanalysts, or code breakers, for the Army Signal Intelligence Service. Being female, Elizebeth earned only half of what her husband made, according to her memoir. The work of both of them, however, was classified Top Secret Ultra.

After the war, she and her husband moved to the U.S. Coast Guard, decoding communications written by liquor smugglers during Prohibition. The author relates that in her first three months of work, Elizebeth decoded two years of backlogged messages. “She was the first person in the United States to use the new science of cryptology to catch smugglers.” She often testified at criminal trials brought against the scofflaws, helping to convict twenty-five of them.

When World War II began, Elizebeth became part of a code-breaking unit for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). [The agency is now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).] She and her team broke the Nazi Enigma codes at the same time as the British team led by Alan Turing. (Because of wartime secrecy, each group did not know about the work of the other.) She also was part of a team that discovered the identity of a Japanese spy living in New York.

All of Elizebeth’s work was again classified as Top Secret Ultra, and not declassified until 2015. The author notes:

“Elizebeth was a true heroine of both World War I and World War II. She is now considered one of the most gifted and influential code breakers of all time. Yet no one knew how many codes she broke, how many Nazis she stopped, how many American lives she saved . . . until now.”

William Friedman died in 1969, and Elizebeth in 1980. William, but not Elizebeth, was inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. Both are buried together in Arlington National Cemetery. MentalFloss reveals:

"Inscribed on their double gravestone is a quote, not by William Shakespeare, but commonly attributed to Francis Bacon: "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER." It too is a cipher—when decrypted, it reads "WFF," William Friedman's initials.”

Back matter in this book for ages 6 and up includes information on “Codes and Ciphers” as well as an exercise on cracking codes. There is also background on cryptography today, a timeline, and selected bibliography.

Illustrator Brooke Smart uses watercolor and gouache for her artwork which is studded with historical touches, quotes by Elizebeth in different fonts, and depictions of coded messages.

Evaluation: Kids have always liked the idea of coded messages, and this story as well as its explanations throughout of how coding works will appeal to them. In addition, they will learn about a woman who defied the expectations of her time and the restrictions of her gender and literally helped save the world. ( )