Library of Lost and Found

 by Phaedra Patrick

This is the story of an older woman, Martha, who is a volunteer at her local library.  Martha is very stressed and sad.  Her house is cluttered with things she needs to sort through and work she has volunteered to do for others.  She feels frustrated because she keeps applying for a permanent job at the library but is never successful despite how hard she works as a volunteer.

She feels she has wasted her life.  She gave up a man she loved to come and look after her aged parents.  Her sister did little to help out because she has a husband and children.  Martha did not get along with her parents.  She felt her father was too strict and wouldn't let them have any fun.  He did not like her associating with her grandmother, he felt the grandmother was a bad influence on her.  She resents her mother because she felt her mother never stood up to her husband.

One day a parcel  arrives on her doorstep.  When she opens it she finds it is a published book of stories she and her grandmother had made up when she was a child.  She is even more shocked when she sees the book is dedicated to her by her grandmother, three years after her grandmother supposedly died.

With the help of a bookseller she is able to track down another copy of the book and also, eventually is reunited with her grandmother who is ill but still alive.

As the book goes on Martha finally blows up at all the demands on her.  She eventually learns why her grandmother disappeared so many years ago... her father had told her to disappear as she had revealed some embarrassing info at an anniversary celebration.  Martha was sick and never learned that the man she thought of as her father was not her biological father, but a fisherman who died in a storm.  She can now understand why her father may not have been as close to her.

Eventually Martha reunites with her grandmother and the remaining family is reunited.  She may even develop a romantic relationship with the bookstore owner.

The book shows that we cannot change our past but we can change how it impacts us and we can overcome our feelings of inadequacy.

I thought it was a very interesting story.  It kept my interest from beginning to end.  The author did a great job of presenting the sad little librarian/perfectionist.