The Bookshop of Yesterdays

by Amy Meyerson

This is a book that is getting a lot of buzsz his year.  It is the story of a young history teacher, Miranda, who is teaching history in the Eastern U.S. and getting used to living with her boyfriend.  She is named for a Shakespeare character (daughter of Prospero, in the Tempest). She is surprised to learn that the Uncle she hasn't seen for decades has died and left her something in his will.  She had always liked her uncle.  He always had puzzles for her to solve.
She decided to go to LA for his funeral and to see her parents.  Her parents refuse to go to the funeral.  She knows her parents and uncle had a fight on her twelfth birthday but doesn't really know why.  She never saw her uncle after that.

She is surprised to learn that her uncle has left her Prospero Books, his LA bookstore, in his will.  As she checks things out she finds that the bookstore is failing financially.

As she goes from one clue, left in books, to another, she talks to various people who knew their uncle.  Each person has another book/clue for her.  She keeps trying to get her mother to talk about the relationship with her uncle but her mother doggedly refuses so Miranda suspends contact with her mother.

The acting Manager and Miranda try different ideas to get business improving.  Their relationship is a bit rocky, the Manager, Malcolm was close friends with her uncle and doesn't trust her.

After following all the clues Miranda finds out that her Uncle is really her father and her parents adopted her after her mother died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the family cabin.  Her real father had difficulty coping with his wife's death and taking responsibility for the baby.  He feels he is responsible for his wife's death because he had not repaired the cabin roof when she asked him to do it. He basically abandoned Miranda to her adopted parents.  Miranda had always thought her uncle was a cool guy.  She is angry and devastated when she learns the truth, including angry at her parent for not telling her the truth.  Eventually her mother tells her what happened and why and that her Uncle/Father accused her adopted mother of tricking him to get the child from him.  This was totally untrue and selfish/irresponsible of him.  This is what caused the rift between them.

In the end Miranda decides to dump her boyfriend and job and stay in LA to run the bookstore.  But she decides they need to let go of the past associations to her birth mother and father, and suggests a new name "Yesterdays Bookshop".  Not sure I like the name.  Of course Miranda evenutally falls for the Acting Manager.... after all this there seems to be the need for a happy ending.  She does reconcile with her adoptive parents also.

The story was very well written.  It was interesting how the author gradually told the story through the clues/people that Miranda unearthed.  I just find it difficult to believe that a father would completely walk away from his child.  I can believe the temporary grief but believe he would have eventually have wanted to reconnect, even if only under the guise of the uncle.