The Lost Family creates a vivid portrait of marriage, family, and the haunting grief of World War II in an emotionally charged, beautifully rendered story that spans a generation, from the 1960s to the 1980s. Today, we are sharing a great (and quite funny) guest post by author Jenna Blum.
I have a secret that’s really shameful, especially for a writer:
For most of my life, I’ve been terrified of libraries.
Bookstores I love, and to me a home is bankrupt without books (No bookshelves? Don’t sleep with that man!: my No. 1 rule when I was dating.) As a child, my happy place was the Watchung BookShoppe in Montclair, New Jersey, surrounded by books, trying to decide which to spend my allowance on.
Montclair had a beautiful library. It had a very modern (for the 1970s) all-glass facade, and inside was the comforting smell of books. Four whole floors of them. I should have been in heaven.
Then, there was the librarian.
I was a good child. I loved to please adults, usually accomplished via my advanced reading skills. I thought this librarian would be no different, especially since I was in the kingdom of books.
But I must have been too excited, because while I was scrambling upstairs, she hissed, “NO RUNNING IN THE LIBRARY.” And “You—BE QUIET.” She chased me down and pinched my chin and said, “ENOUGH, young lady.”
She took my books away.
I became an instant library-phobe.
It was a terrible handicap for a writer. My whole college career, I never set foot in Kenyon’s library (which is also beautiful, at least from outside). When my first novel Those Who Save Us was published, I spoke at book clubs, fundraisers, universities—hoping nobody noticed I avoided libraries. I felt like Ferdinand the bull, raised to fight but wanting only to smell the flowers. What kind of cowardly writer was afraid of libraries?
So when Miss Rachel Sides invited me to speak at her library in Guymon, Oklahoma, despite my terror, I accepted.
Guymon is on the Oklahoma Panhandle, called “No Man’s Land” because originally nobody wanted to live there. It’s next to Beaver, and another town, Hooker. That’s where Miss Rachel’s from.
Miss Rachel and her friend Melyn rolled out the red carpet. They took me to a Mexican restaurant where I had my first horchata. Knowing I was researching my second novel, The Stormchasers, they enlisted a sheriff’s deputy, Elvia Hernandez, to take me tornado-chasing. They brought me to Cactus Jack’s and plied me with tequila.
When I finally entered Miss Rachel’s cool, impeccable library, I barely broke a sweat.
There were kind people waiting to hear me talk about my book, a miracle that always amazes me. Miss Rachel brought me coffee (and offered to put whiskey in it). She had the perfect librarian’s voice: soft and breathy, like Marilyn Monroe’s. “Jenna’s novel changed my life,” she whispered during the intro.
And there was the sweet smell of books, unchanged for decades, paper and dust. As I thanked everyone for coming, I realized I’d let one person’s behavior thirty years ago chase me from a place I loved. Now, thanks to Miss Rachel, I was home.
At the Boston Public Library, taking a photo of the famous reading room.
Photo credit: Tom Champoux
Thanks, Jenna! We are so glad to hear that you are now a library lover! We're glad to have you!
The Lost Family is on sale June 5th! Make sure to get the egalley on Edelweiss. The deadline to vote for it as a LibraryReads pick is April 20th!
-Lainey