Book Lover, The Read online

  Booksellers are raving about The Book Lover

  “The Book Lover is the name of a charming book shop which acts as one of the main characters in this story of broken marriages, secrets, friendships and little white lies. The well developed characters and subject will make this a sure selection for book clubs.”

  ELIZABETH MERRITT, Titcomb’s Books

  “The Book Lover takes you into the heart and soul of the book world, with characters you will come to love. The most honest story about the world of books I’ve read yet.”

  ROB DOUGHERTY, Clinton Book Shop

  “A compelling story of love, loss and survival.”

  TOM WARNER, Litchfield Books

  “Book lovers everywhere will love this story!”

  BETH CARPENTER, The Country Bookshop

  “I’ve always found some character or situation in Maryann McFadden’s books that reminds me of me and mine—this time she even nails my life as a bookseller!”

  BETSY RIDER, Otto’s Books

  More praise for The Book Lover

  “Oh, what a feast for book lovers! McFadden mines bookstores, writers’ lives, publishing, and the rocky terrain of the human heart with equal grace and aplomb. The Book Lover is wise, knowing, and totally wonderful.”

  CAROLINE LEAVITT, NY Times Bestselling Author of Pictures of You

  “Maryann McFadden takes you into the hearts and souls of two ordinary women, a writer and a bookseller, who find the courage to pursue their dreams, and the men they love. The Book Lover is unforgettable.”

  DOROTHEA BENTON FRANK, New York Times Bestselling Author

  “Heartfelt and richly woven, Maryann McFadden’s latest tells the story of love lost - and found again in an unexpected place. It’s a valentine to book lovers.”

  SARAH PEKKANEN, Author of These Girls

  Praise for The Richest Season

  “Set in the fabled landscape of South Carolina’s Low Country, The Richest Season takes us on a heartrending journey of discovery. Maryann McFadden is an exciting new author who writes with compassion, wisdom, and astonishing skill.”

  CASSANDRA KING, Bestselling author of Queen of Broken Hearts

  “In Maryann McFadden’s brave and carefully made novel, The Richest Season, two women set out on open ended odysseys, one to find her life, one to find meaning in her death. McFadden is out of the gate and on her way.”

  JACQUELYN MITCHARD, Bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Still Summer

  “Beautifully written…Let’s readers into the characters’ thoughts and feelings as they struggle to understand how the past has led them to their present situations. In the process, a new person emerges, or perhaps it’s the self each forgot was there all along.”

  ROMANTIC TIMES

  “Skillful plotting keeps pages turning, and McFadden quickly has readers rooting for intriguing Joanna, on the cusp of change.”

  PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY

  “A compelling debut novel that tells the story of one woman’s courage to leave it all behind…”

  FRESH FICTION

  Praise for So Happy Together

  “I can think of no writer I’d rather have sing me songs of the sea, even sad ones, than Maryann McFadden. The characters in So Happy Together will speak to you, and the best ones…have the ocean in their voices.”

  ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS, New York Times bestselling author of Off Season and Colony

  “McFadden deftly weaves a story of three generations of women and the men who orbit around them. With a sure touch, she writes about the mother-daughter bond, the simple pleasures to be found in cooking, the pervasive nature of guilt, and the power of forgiveness…”

  CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE, author of The Way Life Should Be and Bird in Hand

  “So Happy Together is an honest book … that will resonate with many women who struggle to care for family members and themselves.”

  THE RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER

  ALSO BY MARYANN MCFADDEN

  THE RICHEST SEASON

  SO HAPPY TOGETHER

  To Michael and Joni Cassidy

  Who helped me to believe again

  “Books let us into their souls

  and lay open to us

  the secrets of our own.”

  —William Hazlitt

  The BOOK

  LOVER

  MARYANN

  MCFADDEN

  www.threewomenpress.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 Maryann McFadden

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher.

  For information, address THREE WOMEN PRESS, P.O. Box 24, Vienna, NJ, 07880 or [email protected].

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact THREE WOMEN PRESS at 973-586-3247 or [email protected]

  Publishers’s Cataloguing-in-publication data

  McFadden, Maryann.

  The book lover/Maryann McFadden. – 1st ed. – Vienna, NJ: Three Women Press, c2012.

  p.; cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-9848671-0-3 (print); 978-0-9848671-2-7 (ebk)

  Summary:

  When small town bookseller Ruth Hardaway discovers Lucinda Barrett’s novel, she takes the younger woman under her wing, showing her the book world, and sharing her secrets. But when Lucy strikes up an unlikely friendship with Ruth’s son, an injured soldier, Ruth begins to question her judgment. And Lucy has no idea that her life is about to fall apart--because of a little white lie.

  1. Independent bookstores—Fiction. 2. Women authors, American—Fiction. 3. Self—publishing Fiction. 4. Paraplegics—Rehabilitation—Fiction. 5. Paraplegics—Sexual behavior—Fiction. 6. Parole—Fiction. 7. Libraries and prisons—Fiction. 8. Bird refuges—New Jersey—Fiction. 9. Divorce—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Booklover.

  PS3613.C4375 B66 2012 2011944660

  813.6—dc23 1201

  Interior Layout/Design by Dan Berger

  1st edition

  Printed in the United States of America.

  15 14 13 12 4 3 2 1

  Digital book(s) (epub and mobi) produced by: Kimberly A. Hitchens, [email protected]

  Table Of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48
r />   Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  PROLOGUE

  SHE SLIPPED OUT OF BED WHILE HER HUSBAND SLEPT, careful not to wake him. She’d hidden the letter in a stack of coupons and circulars in the basket on the counter, where she knew David would never look. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what it held. Her name and address in her own handwriting on the outside of the envelope was a guarantee: another rejection.

  Slipping a fingernail under the flap, she opened the envelope and there it was.

  Automatically her hands reached for her cropped hair, her fingers pulling, until she turned and caught her reflection in the glass patio doors—a small woman in an oversized t-shirt, her dirty blonde hair sticking up in comical rooster spikes, looking every one of her thirty-nine years. Looking more like a tired punk rocker than an author. Or the wife of an attorney.

  She set the letter on the counter, poured herself a glass of chardonnay, and pulled a cigarette from the pack hidden in her tea canister. She opened the French doors, stepping out onto the patio. A blast of damp night air hit her. It was cold for November in St. Augustine, yet a crimson riot of bougainvillea still covered the concrete walls that surrounded their small yard. Most people didn’t realize northern Florida had seasons, not like southern Florida, which was subtropical and what David preferred. But she needed seasons. A semblance of home.

  She sipped her wine, then put the cigarette between her lips, tossing it in the bushes a second later as a movement caught her eye. The glass door opened and David stepped out in bare feet, then instantly stepped back in.

  “Lucy, what are you doing? It’s freezing out here.”

  She almost told him about the letter. That she was going to shelve her novel this time, as she’d promised. That he wouldn’t have to see her heart broken again. And for a second, she felt a spark of relief. She had to admit, although writing had brought back so much joy these past five years, the constant rejection had also dimmed something inside of her. But if she told him, there’d be no turning back.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said instead, which was partly true.

  He looked at her for a moment, then closed the door.

  Long ago, Lucy had learned that sometimes little white lies were the easiest way to avoid conversations which were not going to end up in a happy place. She knew David would never get how two cigarettes a day, just two, could somehow still her insides, blowing all her stress out on a long, thin stream of smoke.

  David also no longer understood her need to write. How stories popped into her head, and characters had conversations as she showered or walked. How in those last moments of consciousness before sleep, when your mind was at its most pure, a thought would come and you simply had to get up and write it down. David had never experienced that moment of magic when you finally finish writing and a story falls into place like a jigsaw puzzle and your heart soars with satisfaction. You have created characters, an entire little world that rings as true as if it really existed.

  As she thought it did in her novel, A Quiet Wanting.

  Only now she was packing it in after thirty-eight rejections from literary agents, each one a little bullet in the heart. They were all different, but in essence, all said the same thing. You’re just not good enough. And without an agent, she had no hope of getting a publisher.

  She waited a long moment, sipping her wine, the scent of the bay just a few blocks away drifting to her as the air shifted, rustling the leaves of the magnolias and palm trees. When she was certain David was back in bed, she quietly opened the door and grabbed an afghan and the box in the closet of the spare bedroom, then returned to the yard.

  Sitting at the table again, she lifted the lid off the box and picked up the top page: You need to capture me on the first page and you failed to do so. The next letter took an entire paragraph to praise her beautiful writing and well-plotted pages, ending with: Alas, I just didn’t fall in love with this.

  In the pile there were standard form rejections. Of course another agency may feel differently, these letters always ended, but so far, no one did. None of the letters gave her any clear reason why her novel wasn’t deemed good enough. Many even contradicted each other. Hope, her heroine, was too nice, therefore not realistic. Then, another telling her Hope was a well-drawn character, but the story too quiet. There was too much description; there was not enough description.

  But today’s letter was the final straw because she’d really thought this was it. This agent had actually called her, something almost unheard of. Of course Lucy agreed to the three-week exclusive read, in which every day was an unbearable, endless stretch of minutes and hours of fevered anticipation—was the agent reading at that moment? Was she loving it? Was she crying at the end, when Hope leaves her house for the last time, as Lucy herself cried every time she polished that scene? She picked up that letter now and reread the opening sentence. This is a wonderful book, but I was hoping there would be some humor.

  Had she ever mentioned there would be humor? It was enough to make you crazy and she knew that sometimes David thought she was. If he knew about today’s letter he’d say once again: Why do you keep torturing yourself?

  Because the other writers in a fiction workshop she used to belong to really loved it. And there were the raves from her boss’s book club. And anyone else she’d had the nerve to share it with. Where’s your book, why isn’t it published? She heard that all the time. And finally, there was just that belief in her gut.

  She pulled out the entire stack of rejection letters and set them on the table, and there underneath was her manuscript. She pulled it to her chest, remembering the long nights while the world slept and she’d buried herself in these characters’ lives. This book had saved her, when she didn’t think she could be saved.

  Just then the wind kicked up again, tossing the pile of letters in the air. And in that long moment as they floated magically about her, then slowly fluttered to the ground to lie at her feet like a pile of ghostly white leaves, a thought that had been lurking in the back of her mind suddenly came into focus.

  Lucy stood, scooping up the pages. Then she walked to the old fire pit on the side of the patio and tossed them in. She took the lighter and clicked it, touching the edge of a letter. It lit immediately, flared, and in an instant the rest of the letters ignited in a whoosh of flames. She began to laugh as every rejection she had received over the past three years burst into a raging bonfire, lighting up the entire yard.

  Stepping back from the sudden heat, Lucy turned at a noise, relieved it wasn’t David again. Once more she saw herself in the glass door, a deranged-looking woman smiling beside her towering inferno of rejections. Maybe she was a little crazy. But she was damned if she was giving up. There was no way she could keep that promise.

  She would surprise David. She needed him to believe in her again. Besides, she’d already given up on one dream. How could she give up on this, too?

  As she watched the fire burn out, the ashy remains of the rejections settling into a gray heap, she had no idea that the decision she’d made that night, a tiny splash, really, in the world at large, would in time send a ripple a thousand miles north of St. Augustine—would touch the doorstep of someone she’d never met before. Someone she would come to love. But who in the end would turn on her, because of a little white lie.

  1

  RUTH STOOD BEHIND THE COUNTER GOING OVER THE day’s sales on the computer one more time, watching the woman from the corner of her eye. Ruth could have gone home; she knew the dismal numbers weren’t going to change. But when the doorbell had tinkled ten minutes before eight, just as she was about to call it a night, she had sat back on her stool. The customer, with dark brown hair pulled carelessly back in a clip, had headed straight for the New Fiction section.

  Ruth’s calves, which had been complaining for hours, were screaming by then. The store was still technically open, though
no one had come in since six-thirty. The new hours were mandated by the Warwick Village Downtown Revitalization Committee in order to compete with the malls outside of town. This could be more than just a single sale, Ruth told herself. This woman could end up becoming a regular customer, something Ruth couldn’t afford to turn away.

  She slipped off her low heels, and rubbed her left calf with the big toe of her right foot as she glanced at the blue envelope she’d slipped into her purse earlier. She was tempted to rip it open and read it right now. But no, she would wait, savoring it like a teenage girl. She would read it tonight, alone. And tell no one.

  The woman moved to the shelf of bestsellers and picked one up, opening the cover, reading part of the first page, then slapping it shut. She did the exact same thing over and over, spending less than thirty seconds on four books as Ruth watched. She’d let her browse another five minutes, before asking if there was anything she could help her with.

  Ruth turned back to the computer. The figures on the screen began to swim before her. Closing her eyes, she sighed. Once Saturday had been her favorite day of the week in the store. Nothing, though, was the way it used to be.