Where the Books Wait: A Library Love Letter
I think I learned to love the library for two reasons: My mama loved to read. And we didn’t have air conditioning.
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In the hot summers in north Georgia, we spent a lot of hours at the library where it was air conditioned and my mama would set us loose in the children’s section while she went to find her own books. I don’t know if I loved anything more than those hours when I experienced independence and reading in a way I still crave as an adult. That time felt magical to me. The hush, the cool air, the smell of books, all of them seemingly waiting for us as soon as we walked through those doors.
I would get lost in my own imagination and when it was time to go, I would rush to choose what I would take with me, as many books as they would allow, making note of what I’d borrow the next time and consoling myself about the books that would have to wait. Looking back, I realize how empowering that experience felt. I had authority over myself and my reading choices. I had a library card that said I counted for something. I had a name and my signature was a binding promise. I was trusted. And I remember clearly, looking around me one day while realizing that all those books were full of someone’s words.
For a little girl who was often in trouble for talking too much, it looked like the most brilliant opportunity, becoming a writer. My mama had chuckled knowingly when I suggested the idea, and she’d said if I wrote myself a book, I could talk forever.
The library was mysterious, too. It was housed in an old mansion downtown, with tall pillars and a sweeping staircase, and the walls were embellished with beautiful moldings. I just knew it was haunted, which made me love it more. It set my young imagination awhirl. I was obsessed with the library and when I wasn’t there, I was at home pretending I was at the library. I was never allowed upstairs. I spent a lot of time wondering what might be at the top of that grand staircase. And I imagined what it would be like to sneak into the library at night when it was dark and quiet, when I might go anywhere I liked and discover all its secrets. Anything at all seemed possible in a place like that library. Just knowing it existed, made my own life seem more exciting.
On the evenings we’d cruise downtown, I’d strain my neck to peer out the car window just to see the beautiful library, illuminated at night, and also to see another thrilling and mysterious palace of stories, the historic movie theater with its colorful marquee all lit up. I remember my first visit to the theater because I needed to go up a set of steps to a small restroom and my grandmother whispered that I should hurry so the ghost wouldn’t get me. She always said these things with a twinkle in her eye, not to scare me, but to thrill me. We shared that love of ghost stories. And later I learned that this particular ghost was a legend in our town, although his story often changed according to who was telling it.
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To my delight, I also learned there was an old tunnel which connected the theater to the building next door. While I never saw the tunnel, as a girl I thought about it a lot, just like I thought about the rooms upstairs at the library. These secret places were the ghost stories that first haunted me, these mysteries that teased my active young mind. And I realize now how lucky I am that I spent my childhood marveling at the library and the twinkling movie theater, places which made me feel welcome and safe to glory in my personal freedoms, where I learned that stories, like air, were imperative to life.
Perhaps that’s why, in my third novel, a story with many ghosts, I imagined a library at the center of a fictional coastal town. It plays an integral role in the lives of the characters living through the social changes of the summer of 1959. Historically, neighboring Cumberland Island, Georgia, was owned predominantly by the descendants of Thomas Carnegie, brother to Andrew, famous for his industrial-age fortune and his philanthropy, especially the libraries he built. And as I imagined this quiet community only miles from Cumberland, I wanted to think about access to libraries. I imagined this town full of secrets, mysteries, and a tunnel, not unlike the one in my grandmother’s stories, providing a way to access the private library from the movie theater. My characters, none of them particularly courageous and certainly not heroic, are inspired, like me, to wonder about the secret places, the possibilities.
The ghosts of that beautiful library and the movie theater—where the books wait, where the air is cool, where a person’s signature is a trusted promise—are alive and well in my memory, still informing the writing of a little girl who talked too much. And I wonder almost every day, what I might have found in those rooms upstairs or inside that tunnel. I wonder, as do my characters, just what might be possible. And isn’t that the best part?
Check out Kimberly Brock’s The Fabled Earth here:
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