Book Lover. Karen Mack

       Preface

      “I have always imagined that Paradise

      will be a kind of library.”

      ∼ Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) ∼

      When I was seven, my mother drove the family car off a thirty-foot bridge. My sister and I were in the backseat and after the dive, the sky-blue Cadillac Seville flipped over into the craggy ravine and landed on its roof. There wasn’t much water in the river below and the upside-down car sank slowly in the muck, its headlights streaming through the fog. I don’t remember being scared exactly, just too dumbfounded to speak. Then my mother said in a perfectly calm voice, “Do you think you girls can push open the doors?” It was as if she was asking us to turn down the television or put the dishes back on the shelves. She was very matter-of-fact. The radio was still playing as we tumbled over each other, somersaulting out into the shadowy gloom, and I remember thinking that this was just like the Tunnel of Love at Willow Grove’s amusement park that had recently been bulldozed and turned into a suburban shopping mall.

      “Okay, let’s pull ourselves together here,” my mother announced over the incongruous sounds of background