The Gutenberg Connection

By Rebeccah Apling

The Gutenberg Connection sends young and pregnant Hannah Morraine down a dangerous path to reclaim her inheritance from the man who steals it. Preoccupied by her brothers disappearance into World War IIs European upheaval, Hannah must balance giving birth to her fourth child, taking care of her immediate and extended family, and finding a way to sell the original Gutenberg Bible that belongs jointly to her, her parents, and her siblings.

The sale of the Gutenberg Bible is taken out of Hannahs trust and given to the thief who betrays the entire family. As consolation, Hannahs mother gives her a package of original medieval poetry, penned by the hand of Gutenberg. The family and Hannah are unaware of its value, which is much more than that of the Gutenberg Bible. Hannahs friend, a native German discovers its value. The Bible thief begins his plan to steal them, too.

Bethany, Hannahs fourth child, arrives, and Hannah encounters Gutenberg and Christ in an out-of-body-experience. Bethany describes Hannah rescuing her children from a disgusting pigpen expedition, taking a trip to Washington to find people to help locate her brother, and her entrapment into an intended fiery grave designed for her by the Gutenberg Bible bandit.

Why has God set her into such a place of mayhem? Will she survive this season of trouble and testing? Share her faith and determination as she takes on the adventure of a lifetimediscovering the Gutenberg connection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490819822

Rebeccah Apling

Rebeccah Apling has devoured books since she learned to form words and read sentences. This, one of the great loves of her life, inspired her to earn a degree in children’s literature. She believes that loving to read and write fiction is an inheritance from her mother, Margaret (Hannah of The Gutenberg Connection). Her childhood, because of this gift, was a delicious and colorful place to live. Rebeccah lives in Hancock County, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from the true setting of The Gutenberg Connection, Tell City, Indiana. Five days a week, she writes, paints in oils and watercolors, gardens, and enjoys life with her husband, Jack.

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Copyright © 2014 Rebeccah Apling.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1981-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-1982-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922615

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/20/2014

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

About the Author

For Uncle Eugene Splater,

who served our country with unfathomed

courage in World War II from 1941 to 1945,

but to whom the Great War never ended.

And For

Margaret and Joseph Morris,

who inspired me to create the characters,

Jamie and Hannah Morraine in this book.

And, above all,

to my Redeemer

Heaven’s fabric, low lying clouds

where strength of rainbows and dancing shrouds’

Mighty Angel coming down.

The sun His features,

fire His pillared foothold.

He shouts, Who is worthy to wear the crown?

A little scroll, a book of truth

to encircle the world as living proof.

One foot on land, one on the sea.

God’s mystery finished, revealed to you, to me.

Revelation to people and nations,

and tongues of kings—one scroll’s creation.

Heaven’s fabric, low-lying clouds

in strength of rainbows and dancing shrouds.

From Revelation 10:1-11

Hannah always said that Gutenberg walked with his head in heaven’s clouds, listening. She said he listened to the Lord God instruct him in how to invent movable type; to multiply His Word in countless books to countless souls for eternity.

Introduction

In today’s vocabulary the word beautiful is considered trite. How, I wonder, can it be set apart and resurrected? However, it is not the word beautiful that is my subject, but the phrase, a sense of the beautiful.

W.H. Hudson wrote, The sense of the beautiful is God’s best gift to the human soul. This adjective sends my memory back to a land set apart, a place of isolated childhood where the center of the universe was my family, and the day-to-day happenings of the characters in this unit. In this unique domain I inherited a sense of the beautiful for all seasons that life has presented me. Albeit, childhood is the only season of my life where living and beautiful can be identified as completely synonymous.

First, I must tell you where it is, this place set apart from every other community’s’ extraordinariness. There is a region that lies at the very bottom of a dove-shaped area in southern Indiana called Burglin County. This region, near the heart of the dove, is merely a hillside within the small river community of November Shores. No one who lived there in my time called it November Shores, just plain old November. This community lies just outside a great floodwall that surrounds the industrious city of New Burglin, the largest town in Burglin County. Herein lies the distillation of all my memory’s adjectives that share even the vaguest nuance of the word beautiful.

It is not to declare that nothing bad ever happened in this land. Every season of life has its shadows, as well as its vivid light. However, it was a child’s subconscious search for beauty that eventually lifted the spirits of my siblings, and my own, above any violence or chicanery. Because of our parents’ examples, these intruders became characters to learn from, teachers disguised as adversaries. Therefore, every aspect of this childhood season is included in the sense of the beautiful.

One can only recognize the grandeur of this kingdom through the eyes of the very young. Returning to this place from an adult’s point of view reduces reality to the mundane. To approach it with a child’s view is to gather characters and events larger than life.

Encompassing this hilly kingdom other features of a child’s enchantment abounded. Because of the deep curve in the Ohio River, the train tracks and the river road pass beneath the foot of our hill, south to north, or visa versa, on one of the toes of Indiana’s foot. Beyond these lie a narrow plain of cornfields and woods that border the Ohio. Across the wide, ever-changing face of the river to the west stand the hills of northern Kentucky. This is the idyllic view the Creator designed for us Morraine children to look at in our growing up years.

Neighbors lived in motley styled houses on different rungs of our community’s social ladder strung out along the river road on both sides of our hill. These characters enlarged this land with a varied significance of humor, mystery and drama. A clamorous barge building enterprise lay a short distance to the north of our home place across the train tracks, adjacent to the river.

Directly across the road from our home stood an antebellum mansion built and owned by a country squire, Jacob Banebridge, a century before the barge company was ever thought of. According to legend, he owned slaves and fathered steamboat pilots. He was meaner than a cornered copperhead snake, especially to his horses. He bought the forest surrounding our community from Robert Fulton when the region began to be settled. Behind our home place, and miles deep into the hilly county to the east, grew his tree plantation. These hills provided lumber and wood to build the mansion and fuel his steamboats. Much of this timber he sold to other steamboat companies for fuel. Old poplar trees, standing two and three stories high, were cut into studs that ran without a break from ground to roof of the mansion.

This country squire is credited for naming our community that never was, or will be, considered important enough to be mentioned on a state road map. The name November Shores was decided upon to honor his favorite season when his domain glowed with the brilliance of autumn’s light. It was also the month he and his bride occupied the mansion for the first time. The mansion, in all its grandeur, has been, from my beginnings, a symbol of beauty.

It was in this magical place, the hilly kingdom of childhood, that I acquired God’s best gift to my human soul, a sense of the beautiful. I call it the Land of November. As I continue to sort my childhood legacy, the word beautiful rises fresh and clear, an angel of discovery, in old stories my parents told me. As we go, it will become clear to my readers that this particular tale is not so much about me as it is about the life of a woman whose courage, faith and integrity carried her beyond any obstacle that fate would cast in her path. Obstacles, she always taught us, were opportunities for achievement. On this journey through some of her achievements she constantly found opportunity, usually unplanned and effortless on her part, to instill in each of us a sense of the beautiful. This woman is my mother, Hannah Rose Morraine.

Chapter One

GutenbergStreetSignwhite.jpg

Friday, January 7, 2000

Ausweiden, Germany

Dear Mama,

The new children’s book is finished, including the watercolors. The entire package is on its way to my editor, via e-mail. Aix De Province was my road less traveled by this time. I am pleased with something fresh for my editor. As you know, I find satisfaction in completing a project of some unusual place on God’s big planet. However, writing is almost always an agonizing process. My greatest delight is still, like yours, my personal journals.

At my desk, looking out at the German village, the snow flies in a feathery erratic dance. The silent motion calms my soul, and what childlike peace accompanies it! The flakes, bigger ’n biscuits, as Aunt Effie used to say, are really frosty abstract puzzle pieces, flung out of a pristine and fluffy heaven. The cold, bone-aching wind pieces it all together on earth. I find the magic of snow is more in its coming than in its covering completeness. It is much like a celebration of coming change. Through the ancient arched windows twilight nears. The village lights begin to reveal themselves for the approaching darkness. Tomorrow the narrow placed houses, the pastures, the brook and willows will be a scene of the earth at rest.

As you know, I come here at every opportunity. Ausweiden is my haven of reflection after any European assignment. It is a hotbed where many germinated ideas spring up into a fully blown vision. Also, as you know, a snow scene’s beauty comforts me, like the downy comforters here in the guest house; like those wonderful quilts you made years ago in your young and frugal housewife years, like the Morraine childhood that obsesses me of late. I am thankful that I found this village, and the delightful family who run the guesthouse. I am always treated like family.

This morning I drove into Mainz. I simply had to get a look at the manuscript again for old times’ sake. The museum is wonderful, and is constantly upgraded. The Gutenberg manuscript is well protected, and attractively displayed. There is no doubt that this fabulous piece of literature is the one we knew. You would delight in exploring the museum as well as Mainz. I wish you could come with me next trip. We could walk the same paths that your Mr. Gutenberg walked. Sometimes I think that a portion of his spirit permeates the halls of the museum. Well, why would it not? Think of what God did through him!

How awesome to think of the manuscript being stored away in that trunk for so many years. Just a week ago, Harry Smith, the correspondent from the television satellite’s Biography Channel hosted an interesting show from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. The show revealed the one hundred most important personalities of the last millennium (according to their polls). Bet you can guess who took first place. Yes, your Mr. Johann Gutenberg. The best choice, I say! His invention, giving the world an opportunity to read, was a visionary miracle. What a leap of change the civilized world made from there. I know you would have voted for him, dear Mama.

Of course you remember his famous quote, one of his few personal thoughts that history has left us, With the protection of the All Highest… who reveals to the humble what He conceals from the wise. That has been your lifetime banner. He wrote it in 1460, and he knew exactly what true humility means. It applies to souls of the world today, nearly five centuries later, because truth endures. As you always say, truth witnesses to itself as much as the pride of life desolates.

The snow and all this retrospect-rambling, takes me on a line of thought to the season of my birth, and the events surrounding the time of my arrival. According to your calculations, the conception of my life occurred in late February or early March of 1943. I am fond of pinpointing March 1, because, if so, that made me a birthday present to you. Although the dramatic upheaval of my delivery has always been a milestone in the lives of our family members, I know, beyond a doubt, that no child could have been conceived with more love and tenderness surrounding it. No two people ever loved each other more than you and Papa. I have heard my birthing story so many times, that instead of a repeated echo of something told me, it is more like a memory from the true experience.

In my devotional reading this morning, King Solomon stated, Childhood and youth are vanity. This reasoning could certainly not come from a childhood like mine, so full of leaping adventures and righteous teachings. It certainly was never empty as the word vain conveys.

Pages from one of your old journals, and this Ausweiden visit, send my romantic spirit into spiraling fancies. Voila! A barrage of new ideas. Also, Mainz, the city of the great printer, tells me it is time to record the story of my arrival on the planet, and the Morraine family’s adventure surrounding it. This is my secret dream I have carried for years. Thank you, Ausweiden, for the ideas. Thank you, too, Mr. Gutenberg, who gave all writers the tools to accomplish such an impossible task. And thank you, Mama, for faithfully keeping your journals up to date over the years. How I love to travel back in time through them!

Something else, Mama. Someone said, "When you finally go back, it wasn’t your old hometown you missed, but your childhood. What clarity! However, Thomas Wolfe was also right. You can’t go home again. At least not as an adult. You can only go there through memories that childhood has written.

With all this said, I am taking the red eye tonight from Frankfurt to New York. From there I will go directly to the island with my plan to mentally revisit November. There I will make a record, and embellish with November’s ornaments of adventure, my beginnings, and that of the ancient German manuscript.

With love always,

Your bairne, Bethany

P.S. Just learned on the internet today, the last Gutenberg Bible that sold at public auction brought two and one quarter million dollars.

P.P.S. Enclosed are copies of pages from your journal that helped inspire me.

Personal journal, Hannah Rose Morraine

November 7, 1943

Subject: Johann Gutenberg, the third child to Freile Gensfleish and his second wife, Else Wirich, in the city of Mainz, Germany, born on an undetermined date between 1394 and 1399.

Hmmm! 1-3-9-4! Mix them up, turn them around, and what do you get? 1943! I wonder if there is some significance to that? 1943, this very year. Am I being superstitious?

Johann’s papa was lucky enough to be born to the upper class in a very dark time spiritually and intellectually—the Middle Ages. His mama was not an aristocrat, like his papa. She came from the family of a rich tradesman who had plenty of political clout, probably someone like my brother, Winston, who sells jewelry.

You were, Mr. Gutenberg, what Elsa calls an early Renaissance man. But unlike others of the same club, Copernicus and Columbus, and, oh, Martin Luther, too, hardly any records were left to tell us about your life. This is sad, for I believe from what I have read about you, that you were the humblest and greatest of all the Renaissance smart guys. I think I would have liked you very much. What you gave to history made it possible for the rest of history’s greats to make their contributions.

Everyone’s life is a story. There is your story, and there is Eliot’s; stories that have, and are, taking strange turns. He’s over there somewhere in your homeland where war rages now, just as it did in your day. And there is the story of my bairne, who will be here soon. Who knows what sort of story her life will write? Who knows what roads this child will travel, what mysteries she will solve? We all believe this baby will be a girl. I am so worried about Eliot. It has been an age since I heard from him. But now I’m getting off my purpose. Back to you, Mr. G.

Oh, I simply cannot believe what I’m reading here. This author (researcher) makes it clear that several scholars toward the end of the last century tried very hard to take away the credit for the genius that God gave you. Tried to discredit you as the true inventor of printing. I don’t believe it for a minute. As it turns out, neither did responsible minds of history. They never could prove their jealous theories. I really hate it when people in power twist the truth to suit their own whims. Truth, in time prevails!

However, there is not much recorded of your life, so to be fair, I guess I can see how at times, some questioned your authority. It seems you never kept a diary. If you did, it got lost somewhere or destroyed. There are 23 legal documents that survived you, court papers with your name on them. It seems your court battles were your only diary.

War in your time, as this awful world war now, destroyed almost all information contained in the archive housekeeping of your city. They called it unimportant burdensome material, ancient and therefore useless. Oh, brother! They just burned up everything in the city hall to make more space. Ignorance is bliss? Hah!

The difficult oldness of your language has made it very hard to decipher any papers from your time. Why did you use the name Gutenberg as your last name, when it was actually Gensfleisch? Maybe you used Gutenberg because it reminded you of the family home of your father called Gutenberg Hof (house of the good mountain). I could understand that. The house that Jamie built for us is on a good hill. Did your house overlook the Main or the Rhine? Our house has a fabulous view of the Ohio.

Your life is a mystery, but I am a detective at heart. I will pursue this quest to the end.

My sister, Dinah, says that my curiosity rivals the point of nosiness. In time, I will find out all I need to know for I trust the same God that you did. He is the inventor of mysteries. He also gives wisdom for the solving of mysteries that need to be solved. I guess if you were reading my journal, you would say that I am almost as long-winded as I am nosey. In my defense, I say that a good detective must keep a notebook of facts.

Chapter Two

GutenbergStreetSignwhite.jpg

New Burglin, Indiana

Monday, November 7, 1943

I rested, a chubby swirl of life, within my mother’s white clothed figure that decorated New Burglin’s public library like the glowing relief of a fine impressionist painting. An unseen entity, that was the unfolding whole of me in the world of books that my mother loved and that now surrounded her. I was unheard for the time being, but not unfelt, because my life was nearly formed. I was ready to begin a childhood in this southern Indiana town that would completely prepare me for a lifetime odyssey. However, the word rested is not a suitable description. Along with my rambunctious desire to dive into life on the outside, and the worry that clouded Hannah’s psyche of late, there was not much rest for either of us.

The year was 1943. In Europe World War II brewed, a full and boiling devil’s cauldron. News broadcasts daily reported attempts on Hitler’s life by his own people, and by the U.S. and its Allies. Hannah’s thoughts obsessed about her brother, Eliot. For weeks she had heard nothing from him. His last letter was dated August 1, 1943. The cryptic message mentioned a nearby town, but the name of this town had been cut out of the page, leaving a little rectangular hole. These holes in Eliot’s letters were disconcerting to say the least, especially when the family wanted so badly to hear from him. However, it was the U S Army censor’s job to let no information pass that could endanger any of its soldiers or future maneuvers. In all Eliot’s letters there was a sense of fear camouflaged by brave words.

Daily news reports of heavy bombings on Hamburg, Germany began July 24. On August 3 they ceased, along with no more news of Eliot.

Oh, God, please don’t let him be there! she whispered. This prayer was a constant subconscious prayer mixed with faith. Radio news caused Hannah to pray it each time she heard of an area in Europe that bubbled to the surface of the cauldron. Hannah’s conversations with God were the first vibrations my forming senses picked up, prayers she many times was unaware of sending audibly.

She shook off the knot of fear that gathered around me by forcing herself to continue to read. Where she sat, near double glass doors overlooking the golden shade of Da Vinci Avenue, gave her a clear view of anyone coming or going. Occasionally she glanced through the doors watching for her neighbor, Elsa Shonstein.

Sittin’ idle gets a heap o’ nothin’ done, her mother always said. And worry never, ever, brings a ray o’sun. Mama had said that just yesterday in a telephone conversation. Before her famous quote she had asked Hannah to make a quest for her. Child, I need your help. Is there some way you can find out how much the old books are worth?

Hannah knew exactly which books she referred to. The ones in the old trunk in her parents’ bedroom closet. Since Hannah could remember, her mother had treated them as sacred relics. Once Hannah had walked into Mama’s bedroom, and found her sitting on the bed, her ample lap filled with the two massive leather bound manuscripts. She stroked the book covers as though they were as valuable as precious children.

The Schuller children (oh, yes, I forgot to tell you that Schuller was my mother, Hannah’s, maiden name) had been told that the books were heirlooms passed down for centuries to the oldest daughter in each generation of the Schuller family. Hannah’s mother had always been vague about answering any questions about the manuscripts. Her mother, being my Grams Naomi, gave the standard answer, When you’re older, I’ll tell you more.

Hannah was older, and her mother’s next words stunned her.

I believe the books are a Gutenberg Bible. I need to find out their value.

Hannah had nearly dropped the phone. Mama, are you serious? How can that be?

Can you help me, Hannah?

I’ll… uh… try… but…

Mama’s famous words about not being idle came next, and, Thank you, child.

Hannah forced her mind off Eliot, and onto the ambiguous muse before her. She opened the book about Johann Gutenberg, The Miracle of Print, while the afternoon sun moved the autumn shade of Da Vinci Avenue a hair’s breadth to the east. Eliot’s shadow retreated to the back of her mind as she penned notes from the book on to a yellow legal pad. Later, just before bedtime, she would transfer these notes to her personal journal:

November 7: In 1454 or 1455 Mr. G produced the great bible, the old and new testaments, in two volumes. An estimated 210 copies, 180 on vellum (vellum is scraped calf skin). Ugh! Wonder how many little calves had to give their lives for those? She shuddered in disgust.

Excitement stirred in Hannah and replaced the disgust she felt for the slaughtered calves. She scribbled on the pad what had caused the excitement. A Gutenberg Bible in a recent estate sale had brought $50,000. Of course that was just before America had entered the war against Germany. Could the old books that lay in a trunk in her mother’s closet be this valuable?

I kicked mightily, feeling her excitement.

Quiet down, you unruly bairne! she said sharply, with more than enough volume for the library rules. Bairne was a Scottish word from my father’s side of the family. My father, Jamie, referred to all his children at birth as bairne. Hannah loved the sound of the word. It conjured up pictures of soft mists in the highland home of Jamie’s ancestors. How she longed to visit Scotland, Germany and all of Europe, of course without a war in progress. Those high falutin’ ideas come from all those books you read, her Papa would say when she voiced this desire.

The head librarian, Eleanor Fitz, looked up at the sound of Hannah’s protest. Her perfectly coiffed chestnut hair, stiff from the latest sugar water comb-through, didn’t move. Through a hooded gaze from a milky white face, Elenor Fitz toned her authority down with a smile as stiff as her hair. She shook her head. She laid a thin forefinger, loaded with carmine polish on the pointed nail, to her equally thin carmine painted mouth.

Sorry, Hannah silently shaped the word. Her mind went back to the book. What she read was incredible. Never in her wildest dreams could she have guessed that a fortune lay in the Schuller family’s camel back trunk.

She read on, her pulse quickening. According to the author’s findings and descriptions, the old books could certainly be a first edition from five centuries before. After class she would go to her mother’s home and examine them. Also, there were people who could authenticate them. This would take some footwork and letter writing.

Other shadows had replaced Eliot’s now. Through the research book her mind traveled to a land where there was no Hitler until centuries later, a land of castles, knights and cathedrals. A land where a plague called Black Death took superstitious lives in droves. In droves, because people were ignorant of a need for sanitary conditions where pigs ran wild through the streets. Here in this medieval city of Mainz, a shadow larger than them all determined that he would make books for these ignorant masses.

Here Hannah’s notes turned into a letter of statements and queries to whom she usually addressed now as Mr. G:

I am ashamed that I take so many things for granted. We are blessed that our country gives our children free education. Of course this blessing goes indirectly back to your wonderful invention of movable type. And that makes me wonder what kind of education you were given, Mr. G. According to my research, just before your time, there were systems of education for different levels of society. For aristocracy there was training in medieval chivalry, all taught in the local castle. You learned combat, honor, how to court a lady and how to serve the local lord. Imagine learning how to become a knight!

Sons of tradesmen and craftsmen were trained for the same vocation. The sons were first apprentices, then journeymen earning wages, finally reaching the rank of master of a trade, and being in charge of their own business. History has put you in this category even though your father was aristocracy. My Jamie may not be aristocracy, but I’d bet you he would make one fine knight. That I can easily imagine. The third and most important level of education was preparing to enter the Church. Before your time, in the tenth century, something like the public schools of today were practiced. But only for those who could afford to pay, very few. They were taught how to practice their religion, how to write, read, count and calculate.

When you attended private school, there were only forty-four universities in your known world, five in Germany. I think this word, university is a bit pretentious for your day. Very primitive compared to our university up at Bloomington. Imagine grown, young men actually sitting around the feet of the chaired professor’s feet to listen and learn. Well, that’s how the disciples did with Jesus. So, maybe I am the one with pretentious thinking? Grammar became very important as the schools progressed. And they still, in your day, believed the earth to be flat! The only textbooks were hand copied, scarce and large and bulky. Imagine Jazz lugging those cumbersome, hand written scrolls on her shoulders to school and back. However, it is said that what was taught was surprisingly advanced. Much of it has come down to us in basic truth. No wonder you decided to make printed books. It must have been frustrating not to have your own textbooks, to have to repeat and repeat and repeat to your teacher in order to memorize your lessons. And your fellow students would have been as frustrated as you. God sure knew what He was doing when He prompted you to invent your movable type. His timing was absolutely Renaissance!

Hannah closed the research book, and opened another. She copied names and addresses from the book’s appendix as I began to kick and wiggle more. She gently stroked her middle, trying to quiet me. This, in turn, quieted her pounding heart and excited spirit, caused from the belief that her parents could possibly own an original Gutenberg Bible.

As Hannah closed the book and transferred her gaze again to the doors, she relished her surroundings. There was no place she loved better than a room full of books. Except, of course, for her home and the park Jamie had provided for her on the hill above the Morraine house. Most always, Hannah felt a part of her environment, as though God had made her spirit to embellish it any way she could.

Brighten the corner where you are, she hummed softly to me. Her grandmother had taught her the song when she was five years old. Until recently she thought it meant to dress and act as nicely as possible to influence others for good in her journey through life. Granny Belle died when Hannah was seven, but she never forgot Granny’s wish for her. It often came to mind when she was focused on her surroundings.

She had confided this wish of Granny’s for her to her sister, Dinah, after Granny’s funeral. At the reception she had belted the little song out at the top of her voice, thinking that the singing would somehow honor her Granny Belle. Dinah had pulled her arm roughly, and shoved her out of the big Methodist Church’s fellowship hall. When Dinah demanded to know why she was making such a scene, Hannah tried to explain. Dinah’s response was, You really think you’re something, don’t you! She had tossed her thick raven curls, and walked haughtily away. No comfort for her little sister. Just hurt pride at being embarrassed.

In time I would come to realize that this inner desire of Hannah’s, more than her physical beauty, was the reason people turned to give this tiny lady, who glowed with a softness much like candle shine, a second look.

Hannah’s gaze swept over the rows of books around her, thinking how strangely strong the sight of them made her feel. How those sights, and especially the smells of paper and ink that a library emits, could set her mental teeth on edge for adventure. I want you to possess a love for books and what they can give you, my bairne, she whispered. This is one of my prayers for you.

Her thoughts went again to the Gutenberg books