Dear Librarians,
In my new novel, Sunlight Finds You, narrator Nora Chesnow recalls the passionate first love that forced life-defining choices, shaping the woman she became. I live in Kansas, but after reading about the population boom in St. Petersburg, Florida (aka ‘Sunshine City’) at midcentury, I was sure that Nora’s story must unfold there. I pored over tourist guides and maps of St. Pete from the 1940s, when so many post-war newcomers streamed in from across the country, turning the pretty coastal town into a vibrant, bustling city. Once I felt I had a grasp of its beaches, neighborhoods, and historical landmarks, I decided (during a particularly freezing winter in Kansas) that seeing Sunshine City for myself would help me better imagine the St. Petersburg as it was, and as it would have felt for my characters to live and work and move about there. In the Tampa Airport, I shed my coat and snowboots, then took a Lyft across the bridge to St. Pete.
Nora meets Leonard when they’re both students at St. Petersburg High, built in 1926, the first high school in Florida to cost over a million dollars. It’s still in use, and it still has the look of a grand, Mediterranean hotel, with a white stucco exterior, a red clay barrel roof, and Juliet balconies that look out over the tall palms of the front lawn. When I went to see SPH for myself, school was in session, but a teacher, who had no doubt already had a long day, generously gave me an after-hours tour of the school’s interior. She and I walked the breezy arcades that surround the two courtyards, both shaded by leafy trees, and I knew one of those courtyards would be where Nora would first catch sight of Leonard Lifton, reading Animal Farm in a corner bright with climbing bougainvillea. He’s a little older than she is, and from a far wealthier family than Nora’s. She doesn’t know anyone he knows. But they share a love of books, and it’s in their first conversation that they discuss the school’s library, “oak with dark trim, quiet, nothing like the rest of the school.”
I didn’t intend for libraries to become such an important part of Nora’s story, but when I first saw the Mirror Lake Community Library, part of the St. Petersburg Library System, I knew this was where Nora would work after school and on weekends, shelving books. The library at Mirror Lake is another iconic St. Petersburg landmark, a Beaux-Arts style building painted pink with white trim, nestled along the small lake that it’s named for. It was built as a Carnegie library in 1915, and when I visited over a hundred years later, people were still coming in to check out books, though they could also use computer stations and browse DVDs. I loved knowing that Nora, in 1948, would have stood in those same bright rooms, with the same wooden floorboards creaking beneath her. At sixteen, Nora lives with her large, rowdy family in a small house, and she loves the spacious beauty of the library, and the way her work allows her to contribute to its quiet orderliness: “When I slid a book back into its correct home,” she recalls, “I imagined it joyfully recognizing its neighbors (‘Hey ya’ll, I’m back!’).” Later, when she’s heartbroken and alone, she’ll appreciate the focus the work requires. And when, to her terror, she discovers she’s pregnant and unable to reach Leonard, it’s a librarian at Mirror Lake who helps her find the address of a friend who might know where he is.
I wrote Sunlight Finds You in Lawrence, Kansas, and I sometimes wrote in the Lawrence Public Library, which has tall windows that look out over one of our town’s most beautiful parks. The LPL circulates nearly a million items a year, including physical books, e-books, e-audiobooks, streaming materials, DVDs, albums, board games, video games, and magazines. These holdings, of course, are all available to the public at no cost. The holdings are there for all of us. But nearly every time I walk into the LPL, it’s the physical space and the staff I notice serving everyone as equals. I see signs for free, upcoming events: author readings; documentary screenings; children’s story hours; a pop-up closet of gently used prom dresses and tuxedos; help with taxes; help with understanding Medicaid, help with gardening questions, and help with finding resources to apply for citizenship. As I write, I often overhear a librarian helping a patron solve a practical question, or just talking with someone who is clearly eager for conversation, usually about a book, but sometimes about anything at all.
The Lawrence Public Library, like so many libraries I’ve had the pleasure of knowing, is a truly welcoming space for all. On scorching hot days and bitterly cold ones, I notice more people who appear unhoused taking shelter there, sitting on the same comfortable chairs that I like so much. For a civilized society, public libraries seem both a marvel and a requirement, for everyone, surely, is entitled to a little comfort, beauty, assistance and access, or just a quiet place to think. Libraries are true anomalies in our society, serving the rich, the poor, and everyone in between as equals.
Nora, as an adult, eventually leaves Florida for Hollywood. She doesn’t dream of being a starlet; she dreams of becoming a librarian, and once in California, she goes back to school and makes that dream a reality. Her family comes for a visit, and they don’t seem to understand what she does–why did she have to go to college just to work at a library? Didn’t she do that when she was in high school? She explains, briefly, as best she can, how she works to create a space for wonder and curiosity, and for assistance to all. Her younger sister excitedly asks if, working at the Hollywood branch, she’s ever checked out a book to a celebrity. Nora’s answer disappoints her, and the sister surmises that celebrities are so wealthy they don’t need libraries, as they can just buy books.
“Maybe,” Nora says. “I’d still go.”
So many of us feel the same.
With gratitude,
Laura Moriarty
