Emma Who Saved My Life

There's something sad about seeing an old book, a novel you really liked, gracing a discard shelf. Maybe the only thing worse is seeing a book you wrote on a retailer's remainder table.

I'd stopped by our local library to renew my card and was leaving when I chose to swing by the lonely discards. The area's darker than the rest of the libary, just down from the bus schedules and free community newspapers. There well-thumbed and often forgotten reads are left for anyone wishing to give a needy title a new home. There it was, Emma Who Saved My Life, a book I'd read in the early '90s (solely during lunches in Theatre Square while working as a copy editor).

I forget, today, why I even liked it. I just remember caring about the main character, an actor trying to make a mark on the biggest of stages: New York City. I really wanted him to hook up with the girl (Emma) for whom he so obviously pined. Wilton Barnhardt did well with the story. For, when the two finally get together, Barnhardt leaves the reader with a fanciful, realistic ending. There's no sappy fairy tale walk into the sunset here. Maybe that's why the book made such an impact.

The book's still there. A hardcover, it forms the right phalanx of the forgotten. My mom, on her regular rounds at a local Goodwill, remembered I'd liked it and found me a copy in the mid '90s. I left this copy for someone else to enjoy. Just look for it. It's there, about ten books down from an old tattered copy of Bridges of Madison County.