Chapters (57)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
- When We Meet Again
- A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
- Discussion Guide
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“Maybe I should come, then. Where is it?”
“Fourth Avenue, between Union Square and Astor Place.”
“I’ve never heard of those places.”
“Well, it’s crazy. There are seven blocks of bookstores.”
“That does sound crazy.”
“There’re a lot of books in the world!”
“I don’t even think a lifetime of reading would be enough to get through just one shop.”
“I guess not.” Theo took another sip of wine. “There’s one store that sells only cookbooks—that’s on the corner of Astor. Then there’s At the Sign of the Sparrow, which sells just theater books.”
“That’s marvelous!”
Alice seemed much less anxious now, delighted by his descriptions of Book Row. He could see she immediately understood that it was unlike anywhere else in the world: store upon dusty store with stands spilling onto the street—Lowenstein’s, Mosk’s, the Strand—all peopled with fascinating, eccentric intellectuals and bibliophiles, students and writers. She laughed when he told her that Friendlies had the unfriendliest owners.
“Charing Cross Road just isn’t going to seem the same now,” Alice said with a rare genuine smile. But then she stole another look at her watch, and he wondered again where she really wanted to be. She caught his eye, and her face flushed. “You haven’t told me how you got involved with publishing,” she said quickly, before he had the chance to ask what was going on.
“I was a student in thirty-three when Hitler burned the books. ‘Literary holocaust,’ the press called it. We were all horrified.” Tens of thousands of books had been destroyed at the Bebelplatz in Berlin, setting off a chain of similar events around Germany. Millions of books were annihilated, and it had caused outrage around the world. “I’d always loved books, but that was when I understood the power they held to alter lives, and history.”
“I remember . . .” Alice murmured, deep sorrow in her eyes.
“I don’t know what happened here, but Americans reacted by donating millions of books to the armed services. I remember standing on the steps of the New York Public Library and watching as all these famous New Yorkers and celebrities turned up to make donations. It was really something.” He broke into a smile, the memory rekindling the passion he’d felt. “Some wars can be won in the mind as well as on the battlefield.”
Most of the tables were full now. Christina Foyle stood up, the crowd grew quiet, and the opening address began, then a discreet army of waitstaff filed in with the first course of fresh English asparagus and hollandaise. He couldn’t ignore how Alice kept glancing at her watch and fidgeting. She ate quickly and was sociable enough with the other guests, but he found he couldn’t sustain a conversation with her. Then, halfway through Graham Greene’s speech, she stared at the door and shifted in her seat.