For readers of Martha Hall Kelly and Beatriz Williams comes poignant historical fiction that reminds us that literature has the power to speaks to everyone uniquely — but also to draw us together.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Julia Bryan Thomas’s The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club, which is out June 6th!
Massachusetts, 1954. With bags packed alongside her heavy heart, Alice Campbell escaped halfway across the country and found herself in front of a derelict building tucked among the cobblestone streets of Cambridge. She turns it into the enchanting bookshop of her dreams, knowing firsthand the power of books to comfort the brokenhearted.
The Cambridge Bookshop soon becomes a haven for Tess, Caroline, Evie, and Merritt, who are all navigating the struggles of being newly independent college women in a world that seems to want to keep them in the kitchen. But when a member of the group finds herself shattered, everything they know about themselves will be called into question.
From the author of For Those Who Are Lost comes an extraordinary love letter to books and friendship, a story that is at once heart-wrenching, strengthening, and inspiring.
CHAPTER 1
September 1955
“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”
—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
It had been raining for hours and still a light pattering soaked the cobbled pavement, fallen leaves swimming in puddles all around. Alice Campbell walked down Simpson Street in one of the oldest parts of Cambridge, Massachusetts, not looking left nor right but straight ahead, waiting for the redbrick building to come into view. It was a beautiful place, the Cambridge Bookshop, her pride and joy. Lifting her umbrella, she took it all in: the cherry-red door set at an angle at the corner; the glossy, black facade and trim; the simple, faded gilt letters spelling out BOOKS. When she opened the shop, there hadn’t been room to put the entire name on the plaque, leaving it perhaps a little nondescript. But Alice hadn’t minded. The people who were meant to buy her books would find their way inside.
A few titles were exhibited on shelves in the window, newer books that had just come out in the last few years: The Catcher in the Rye, The End of the Affair, and her favorite, From Here to Eternity. The store, however, was located on an unremarkable street without a dress shop or comfortable café nearby, leaving pedestrians to walk past without giving it a second glance. Nor did the titles displayed to passersby reflect the true nature of the bookshop, where both old and new books rested on the somewhat crooked shelves. That, too, did not matter. She had chosen her entire catalog herself. The bookshop and the books in it were her refuge, her life, her mission.
Two windows, also framed in black, were above the shop on the second story, where Alice had made a flat out of an old bookkeeper’s office. At night, she read there by lamplight; by day, she organized and ordered and occasionally sold a few books in her little shop downstairs. It was more than she had ever hoped for. Sometimes she wondered at her good fortune.
Stepping around puddles, she made her way to the door, fishing in her pocketbook for the key. It turned in the lock and she pushed the door open, the musty odor of books lingering in the air. After closing the door behind her, she folded her umbrella and slipped it into the stand, setting her bag on the counter. Every time she entered the room, she was overcome by its beauty. The walls were paneled in oak and the window casings were wide and generous, allowing a great deal of light into the room. The secondhand desk in a corner was made of mahogany and was quite grand, she thought, though Jack would have called it wormy. It’s true, it had seen better days, but she had polished it until it had a lustered sheen, and as far as she was concerned, the worn places only gave it character.
Alice removed her gloves and unbuttoned her raincoat, then hung it on a hook near the door. Before she locked the shop and went upstairs, she would choose a book to take with her to while away her evening. A box from Doubleday had arrived earlier, and she took a sharp knife from the top desk drawer and cut it open. Unfolding the stiff cardboard, she pulled back the flaps to find copies of a du Maurier novel, My Cousin Rachel, which she had been expecting. Nodding in satisfaction, she closed it again and wandered over to a nearly empty shelf where she had stacked several new copies of Jane Eyre. She took the one from the top of the pile and tucked it under her arm, wondering who would read it with her.
All around the world, she knew, were kindred spirits who reached for the same book on the same evening for comfort or affirmation, souls who found themselves in the pages of a book. But there were other readers too—readers who didn’t yet know who they were and how much a particular novel would mean to them. Alice felt it was her job to find them and give them a book.
She bolted the shop door, took her pocketbook from the desk, and turned off the lights before making her way upstairs. It had only been a few weeks since she had moved into the building, but already she knew the familiar creak of every stair.
The flat above was simply furnished: a bed against the far wall, a wardrobe, a table, and chair. She hadn’t a television or even a sofa, but there was an old chaise with cushions one could sink into and a trunk she had found at a secondhand shop that functioned as a perch for a teacup. In the second room, there was a makeshift kitchen, where she plugged in the electric kettle and set out a cup and saucer as she did at the end of most days.
Alice had never lived in Cambridge before. In fact, she had never even been to Massachusetts. After Jack, she had taken a map and traced her way as far from Chicago as she could get, loading her few possessions into suitcases and boarding the train to Boston. It was the most frightening, exciting thing she had ever done. It had taken her three weeks to find an empty shop and then another two as she cleaned it up sufficiently to house the books she had selected and ordered from publishers and used bookstores around the city.
After pulling a dressing gown from the wardrobe, she slipped it on over her dress as the kettle whistled. She brewed a cup of tea and took it to the chaise, where she sat down with her book. It lay unopened on her lap as she contemplated the silence. It was good to have a space to oneself where one could think and dream and plan. And there was much to plan, for it was to be a busy year if things turned out as she hoped.
Taking a sip of her tea, she leaned back into the cushions, lifted her new copy of Jane Eyre, and held it to her breast. It was hard to imagine it had been published in 1847, as fresh as it felt to her each time she read it. She understood the loneliness Jane must have felt has a child and even more the struggle to find her way in life. Brontë’s heroines, like so many women before and after, were often dependent upon the humor and indulgences of men. Alice’s sister lived in a twenty-room mansion in Chicago, but at what expense? To have such a home meant to be as dependent as a child, and that was one thing Alice would never be again.
She opened the book to the first page, content in every way with her situation, and began to read.
The following day was Friday, a good day for a bookseller in Boston. In fact, it was a good day for booksellers everywhere. Readers came in with wages in their pockets and the desire to have a book companion for the weekend. She sold two copies of Catcher, a Hemingway, a Nancy Mitford that had only been in the shop for a few hours, and four used books she had picked up at a book stall a week earlier for a quarter apiece.
Around three o’clock, a young woman walked into the shop, and Alice glanced up from her seat behind the oak desk, where she was shuffling papers, writing down accounts. She nodded in greeting, loath to disturb anyone browsing through a bookshelf, though the girl didn’t respond. She was likely one of the college girls around town. They were near Radcliffe, after all. The girl wore a plain dress, with sensible shoes and a pair of dark tortoiseshell glasses. Alice tried to turn her attention back to the accounts, but she was interested in which shelves the girl explored. For a moment, she thought of handing her a copy of Jane Eyre and then stopped herself. This was not a kindred spirit, she could tell. This was a girl who wanted A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or another popular book of its ilk. Not that she disparaged readers of any sort, but she was looking for someone different.
Eventually, the girl turned away from the shelves and brought a book up to the desk. It had been previously owned, a slim volume of poetry, an altogether nice choice.
“That will be one dollar, please,” Alice said.
As the girl took a bill from her handbag, Alice placed the book upon a sheet of waxed brown paper, folding it carefully and tying it with a length of string. When she was finished, she took out an ink pad and stamped an image upon the package. “The Cambridge Bookshop” looked elegant in formal, ink-dipped letters. One might not know the name of the shop when one went inside, but if one came out with a purchase, it was stamped upon the paper for everyone to see.
The girl glanced at a flyer on the desk and back at Alice.
“You’re having a book club?” she asked. “How does that work?”
Alice nodded. “Once a month, a small group will meet and discuss a different book.”
She picked up the flyer, which read:
The Cambridge Bookshop
is proud to host a Reading Club
Last Thursday of each month
Serious book lovers only
Inquire if interested
“Will it be a classic?”
“Most of the time, yes,” Alice replied. “In September, we’ll be reading Jane Eyre.”
“May I take this?” the girl said, reaching for the paper. “I’ll talk to my friends and see what they say.”
“Of course,” Alice replied, wondering if she had misjudged the girl. “Let me know by next week if you’re interested.”
The next few days were unremarkable, although satisfying in their own way. Alice loved having a routine, and her days had little variation. Coffee, toast, and the newspaper, in which she read only the fashion page. Selling and ordering books in the morning. Exploring Cambridge during her lunch hour, walking through parks and peering in shop windows until she came upon the luncheonette, where she usually ordered a ham on rye or chicken salad at the counter. Afternoons were spent going over the accounts, followed by no small amount of daydreaming over what to read next. She was anxious about only one thing: to know with whom she would share Jane Eyre, wondering if the girl who took the flyer would return with her friends. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long.
She knew them the moment she saw them. The weather was as sunny and bright that afternoon as it had been rainy the previous one. Alice was washing the windows, which looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned in years, when four girls, smiling and talking, arms linked, came down the street and stopped at the door. A moment later, they stepped inside and Alice smiled in greeting, as if they were very old friends. They were young—not even twenty, if she was correct—and obviously Cliffies. One, a beautiful blond, even wore a sweater with the Radcliffe emblem on the front. She couldn’t have been happier to see them.
“Hello!” Alice said in greeting. “Welcome to the Cambridge Bookshop.”
