The Books Went to a Library, and a Reader Wrote Back

Fern is moving to a small apartment abroad, and the shelves will not come with her.

By Neil Solomon · 2 min read

Picture a woman named Fern, 71, a retired schoolteacher. Her living room has a wall of books, most of them read twice. She and her husband Cliff bought them one at a time over forty years. Cliff died three years ago. Fern is moving to a small apartment abroad, and the shelves will not come with her.

A used bookshop looked at a few boxes and offered a small amount, because most of the books were paperbacks with soft corners. Fern thanked the owner and took the boxes home. She sat on the floor with a novel in her lap, one Cliff had loved, and found his pencil marks in the margins.

“This one needs a reader,” she said to the empty room.

She called the small library in the next town. The librarian said they hold a sale twice a year and the money buys children's books. She added that they could not take everything. Water-stained books and old textbooks would have to go elsewhere. Fern sorted the boxes into three piles: for the library, for a school, and for the recycling center.

Before she taped the library boxes shut, she tore a page from a notepad. She wrote: This book was read in a kitchen by two people who liked it very much. I hope it keeps you company. If you wish to tell me how it went, write to me. She added an email address and tucked a copy into the front of six novels, Cliff's among them.

Cliff's pencil marks were the hard part. For a minute she nearly kept the book. Then she left it as it was, marks and all.

Five weeks later, in her new apartment, a message arrived.

Dear Fern, my name is Jonah. I am 22 and I bought your book for one dollar. I read it in two days. I loved the marks in the margin. Whoever wrote “yes” near the end had the same thought I did.

Fern read it standing at the window. She wrote back that the “yes” was her husband's, and that he would have laughed to know it had traveled so far.