Barbara Davis uses book-care language and the mystery of forgotten books to unfold two beautiful love stories set decades apart.
Ashlyn Greer sells rare books out of her smalltown New England bookstore. In the back of her store, she binds new books and carefully restores old ones. She also has the rare gift of psychometry. When she touches an old book, she can feel the echoes of the books' previous owners.
Ashlyn comes across two beautifully bound books of "three-quarter Moroccan leather, ribbed spine, marbled blue boards." Neither book credits an author or lists the date of publication.
The first is titled Regretting Belle. The inscription on the inside cover reads:
'How, Belle? After everything . . . how could you do it.'
The second book is titled Forever, and Other Lies. Holding it, before reading the first line, Ashlyn knows that the anger and betrayal she senses from the book is not from someone who read it, but from the woman who wrote it.
The two books tell alternate versions of love gone wrong. In the late 1930's while all the news is of Hitler's rising power in Europe, Belle is trying to free herself from her rich Nazi-loving American father and from a fiancé she doesn't love. Hemi, a former journalist who wrote Regretting Belle, believes he was won her heart but doesn't know if that will stop him from publishing a scathing exposé of Belle's father.
Enthralled with the books and looking for clues about the true identity of the authors, Ashlyn finds Ethan, the son of the man who once owned them. They set out on a quest to find out how the books ended up in his father's possession and the true identity of their authors. The answers they find reshape both their lives.
I'll stop there. I don't want to rob you of the ever-surprising turn-of-events you'll encounter in The Echo of Old Books.
What I can share, are the wonderful book-lover quotes Barbara Davis creates. While the chapters begin alternating between the text of Regretting Belle and the alternate story in Forever, and Other Lies, each of the chapters in between that Ashlyn narrates begins with a quote from: The Care & Feeding of Old Books by Ashlyn Greer:
There is nothing quite so alive as a book that has been well-loved.
To lose oneself in the pages of a book is often to find oneself.
The number of lives we are capable of living is limited only the number of books we choose to read.
Chapter-by-chapter, we understand that Ashlyn's love of books stems from what she's needed to learn about loving people:
Protracted neglect is both shameful and sad, and will likely result in reduced value, but there is nothing so unsettling, or so unforgiveable, as intentionally inflicted damage.
Books are rib and spine, book and ink the stuff of dreams dreamed and lives lived. One page, on day, one journey at a time.
In the happiest times of my life, I have reached for my books. In the saddest times of my life, my books have reached back.
As I look at the books that surround me, they form brackets around every one of these phrases.
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