Chapter 60
The Puget Sound Book Company
101 South Main Street??Seattle, WA 98104
3/15/94
Dear Frida,
Greetings from a typical sopping Seattle spring day. When I left the apartment for work, I noticed tiny green leaves sprouting on the lilac bush across the street. I feel like I measure the rhythms of my life by that bush. Leaves, buds, blossoms, bare branches, and then it starts all over again. So much has happened since I watched the leaves sprout last year. I wonder where my life will be when the lilacs are in bloom this year?
Your mom doesn’t hate you. Don’t say that! You’re my idol for being honest with her. I wish I was fearless like you. And wise. What you wrote about guiding people to their own empathy. That’s exactly what you do with your writing because you’re not afraid to wear your tender heart on your sleeve. People say that like it’s a bad thing, but why? Look how you use it to help readers (me) understand (and feel) what other people are going through.
You’re right about booksellers not making “that” kind of money. I was doing my weekly prowl in the basement at Bowie & Company, and I came across a book called We Followed Our Stars . It’s an autobiography of a woman named Ida Cook. She and her sister used their passion for opera as a cover to get Jewish people out of Germany at the start of WWII. It’s appropriate that you mentioned romance novels, because she made the money to do it by writing those exact kinds of novels under the pen name Mary Burchell.
As you well know I was painfully embarrassed when I got out into the Real World and found out Everyone But Me grew up on Middlemarch while I was reading Harlequins. It turns out Ida aka Mary wrote one of those Harlequins. How do I know this? Because I kept it. Under the Stars of Paris . Why did I keep it? I have no idea. I headed straight to the library, and a marvelous librarian (aren’t they all) helped me hunt through microfiche and reference books. We tumbled down the rabbit hole and discovered all these amazing things about Ida. She was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, and she was president of the Romance Novelists’ Association. She wrote in their newsletter how a bad romantic novel is embarrassing and indefensible, but so is a bad realistic novel, plus the bad realistic ones are usually pretentious, too. Then she added, “But a good romantic novel is a heart-warming thing which strikes a responsive chord in those who are happy and offers a certain lifting of the spirits to those who are not.”
Her words keep circling in my brain. A certain lifting of the spirits. You do that, Frida. But what spirits do I lift? It breaks my heart, the thought of Merjema cleaning houses when she should be in school. It’s not the Ramonas’ fault they had to flee their country. And what am I doing other than feeling bad about it? I thought about Ida, unapologetically writing her romantic novels so she could make the world a better place, and I asked if we could hold a fundraiser at the store. We’d invite the book clubs we work with and donate 10% from their purchases to my new project: Book Clubs for Bosnia.
I was hoping we’d make at least $100, but after I gave a short speech about the Ramona Club, all the women donated an extra $5 or $10 when they bought their books. The people working downstairs in the café gave us everything out of their tip jar, and remember Caftan Dawn? She apologized for saying I wasn’t good enough for Sven. She said she was going through a hard time with her husband and feeling bad about herself, and she took it out on me. Then she gave me $55. I felt awful for my mean thoughts about her. Everyone has a story. You never know what it is or why it makes them do the things they do. Misjudge not lest ye be misjudged!
Love,
Kate