For years I searched bookstores for one of my favorite childhood books, borrowed again and again from the library. But having forgotten the title and author, I found it impossible to track down. Remembered fragments came together in my mind: an epistolary, turn-of-the-century novel with a tomboyish heroine of about 14, her best friend a half-Indian boy named Sam, who is in love with her. And, what I remembered with absolute clarity, Sam dies horribly of lockjaw just after the girl realizes she loves him, has always loved him. Reading about his death always brought me to tears, desolate at the thought of the girl finding and then losing her true love–she and I barely consoled by Sam’s knowing of her love before it was too late.
No one else had heard of this book. I imagined I would never find it. I began to think it had never existed, that I had pieced together characters and events from other books into this one. The puzzle was figuring out where I thought up lockjaw. To this day, everything I know about lockjaw is based on that book.
Passing by the library one day, I decided to enlist a librarian in my search. In the familiar teen-literature section, where I had spent hours reading and choosing books, I became strangely shy, embarrassed to tell the librarian how little I could remember, and how what I did remember had haunted me for years. I would search on my own.
My solo search ended at the P’s. Daunted, I gave up and approached the librarian.
“It’s a book I read when I was 11. . . . The heroine loves a half-Indian boy named Sam and he dies of lockjaw. . . . It’s all in letters. . . . Can you help me?” He was stumped. He called in his colleague. I repeated my spiel to her, phrasing my request so it wouldn’t sound quite so strange–or important.
This second librarian was intent on our hunt; obviously, she understood how vital this was. Still, her computer keyword search was fruitless. Next she pointed me to a children’s reference book and suggested I look under likely subjects. The volume–thick as a big-city telephone book–disheartened me, but I was sure I would know my book once I saw its elusive name. I checked every category I could think of–“pioneer” and “regional” and “friendship.” Nothing. Desperate, I tried “frontier,” expecting more disappointment. An entry at the top of the page caught my eye: “The Diary of Trilby Frost,” by Dianne Glaser. Bingo! I ran over to my librarian.
“This is it!” I said. “I’ve found it!”
The computer showed a copy upstairs; we were elated. I thanked her and dashed away to retrieve it. This section of the library was also familiar, but I had no time to waste in reminiscing. I hurried through the shelves, praying that no one had checked it out. E . . . F . . . G . . . Ah! There it was!
I took it gently off the shelf. Everything about it looked familiar: the shape, the type, the cover picture that seemed always to have been in my mind: the curly haired girl looking pensive, the smaller, brooding face of the dark-skinned boy. I was too overwhelmed to read the book there. I ran back to my librarian and excitedly showed it to her. We shared a book-lover’s moment, the anticipation of a good read ahead. Thanking her, I left with my prize.
I hesitated a few days before reading “Trilby,” instinctively postponing what I suspected would happen: I sensed that if I opened it, I would lose the adored book of my childhood. I took the risk, and a worse–unexpected–thing happened: My own version dissolved as I read the actual book. I had had a different story in my head, not better, but mine, about what “Trilby” had said to me. I was holding the actual copy I had borrowed 18 years ago–yet the book was not the same at all. Every turn of the page confused me: Had I remembered this event, this character, over the years, or did I only imagine I was remembering? Incidents seemed familiar, but only after I read them did they click into place, leaving a trail of doubt. I seemed to be remembering just half a step ahead of the book. For example, Sam contracts lockjaw from a cut in a wagon accident with Trilby; he carries her to safety in a driving rainstorm. I remembered that vividly . . . or did I? I couldn’t be sure; I was losing my memories as I read on.
What I did remember was true to the book’s spirit, even as it failed in accuracy: The book was a diary, not letters; the boy’s name was Saul, not Sam. But if my mistakes were minor, my omissions were astonishing: Trilby’s father and younger brother die; she learns she is the illegitimate daughter of her father’s dead mistress; her sister gets pregnant by a sleazy boarder. I had forgotten all these events–but never Trilby and Saul’s romance, and his gruesome death: The terror of lockjaw had stayed with me for years. But what an injustice I did my poor heroine by boiling her story down to doomed love and leaving out everything else! I have always been a romantic at heart, but I’m amazed at how early my propensity started. The book caught me at the right time, primed for the turmoil and passion of adolescence; no wonder I remembered the love story to the exclusion of all else.
I rediscovered “The Diary of Trilby Frost” but lost my childhood “Trilby” and, more importantly, the personal version I had constructed. What I had loved as a child was obvious–Trilby’s self-sufficiency; her age, a glamorous 14; the ideal of a love stronger than death–but I could no longer love “Trilby” in the same way; I was a different person. It was not the book itself I craved, but my intense love of the story.
The romance of Trilby and Saul still caught at my heart: His death still made me cry, but I made myself cry more than I needed to, over losing my own great love for the original “Trilby.”
