When I met Lark, two crit­i­cal ideas impact­ed my life: the impor­tance of read­ing and embrac­ing new expe­ri­ences. Though I had always been a capa­ble read­er, I sel­dom indulged in books due to my upbringing—my par­ents had lit­tle inter­est in lit­er­a­ture. This back­ground made me some­what of an out­sider, lack­ing in finesse but not mal­ice; I often embod­ied a friend­ly brute, rem­i­nis­cent of the role I nat­u­ral­ly played in a grade-school pro­duc­tion.

At twen­ty-eight, I was a house painter and an ama­teur musi­cian in Duluth. On one cold win­ter day, I sought refuge in the library for a qui­et place to enjoy my lunch. Seat­ed in a seclud­ed car­rel, I heard a woman at the help desk sooth­ing anx­ious patrons with her calm, melod­ic voice. Her abil­i­ty to address fears and con­fu­sion in oth­ers cap­ti­vat­ed me. Even as I sought to glimpse her, she remained hid­den behind a pecu­liar char­ac­ter, fur­ther inten­si­fy­ing my curios­i­ty.

Return­ing to the library dai­ly, I began lis­ten­ing intent­ly to her inter­ac­tions. She not only guid­ed patrons to resources but intu­itive­ly addressed their unvoiced ques­tions and needs. Her dis­cus­sions of literature—which seemed like a dif­fer­ent world from mine—left me awe-inspired. I scrib­bled down rec­om­men­da­tions like “Dick­ens” and “lumi­nous,” mar­veling at her rich insights while secret­ly wish­ing to engage more with this enchant­i­ng fig­ure who embod­ied grace and knowl­edge.

Dri­ven by a desire for con­nec­tion, I expand­ed my library vis­its to include actu­al reading—Dickens, Con­nor, and oth­ers pulled me into com­pli­cat­ed nar­ra­tives. I expe­ri­enced an intense obses­sion with lit­er­a­ture while neglect­ing my work, paint­ing jobs fad­ing into the back­ground as sto­ries became my escape. The time­less tales of Beowulf, Odysseus, and oth­er lit­er­ary fig­ures res­onat­ed with me, ignit­ing a pas­sion for nar­ra­tives of strug­gle and hero­ism.

In this fren­zied pur­suit, I stum­bled upon Mol­ly Thorn’s elu­sive work, often mur­mured about across the city. I even­tu­al­ly obtained one of her nov­els, intrigued by Lark’s rev­er­ence for her work. But amid the recent soci­etal shift toward anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, there lin­gered a trep­i­da­tion sur­round­ing lit­er­a­ture itself. Despite all this, my antic­i­pat­ed dis­cov­ery of Molly’s book became a per­son­al quest, one sig­ni­fy­ing the hope of cher­ished nar­ra­tives against an ever-chang­ing world.