Man Returns Book He Stole From Bookstore 40 Years Ago
A package arrived at Booklegger, a used bookstore in Old Town Eureka, California. Inside was a first edition of The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey, a typed letter, and a $100 bill.
Employee Katy Longshore was working when it arrived. The owner had almost set it aside to open later. Longshore talked her out of it.
"But I said, 'No, you have to open it!'" Longshore recalled. "So she opened it up, and it was this typed letter from someone who had been in the store in the 1980s."
The letter explained everything. The sender had stolen the book from Booklegger sometime in the early 1980s while a student at Humboldt State University — now Cal Poly Humboldt. They'd been struggling. The admission that followed is the kind of thing most people never find the courage to write.
"I was a student at HSU with a horrible drug and alcohol problem," the letter read. "I was in desperate need of money, but even more desperately needed a spiritual awakening in my life. I was eventually blessed with just such a psychic change."
The book had been sitting in a box in their garage for decades. When they found it recently they looked up the store, discovered it was still open after all these years, and decided to make it right.
"I was so happy to find that the store was still in business so I could return the book and tell you how sorry I am for my utter lack of principles," the note said.
The sender also left a phone number in case anyone from the store wanted to reach them.
What Made It Worth Writing About
The story would be charming enough on its own. But it's the honesty in the letter that caught people's attention when Booklegger shared it on social media. No excuses. No minimizing. Just a clear-eyed accounting of who they were then, what they did, and who they became.
That kind of reckoning — taking responsibility for something nobody would have ever found out about, returning something nobody knew was missing, writing a letter that required admitting addiction and moral failure to strangers — is quietly remarkable. The $100 bill is a nice touch. The letter is the real thing.
The bookstore's response was equally gracious. Rather than anger or bitterness about the decades-long gap, the staff embraced the gesture.
"The heartfelt apology is pretty extraordinary," the bookstore wrote in response to the attention the story generated. "Making up for a past wrong, no matter how belatedly, takes courage. Yes, people make mistakes, but the ways people show us the good of humanity are far more numerous."
This Isn't the Only Time Something Like This Has Happened
Stolen and overdue books finding their way home decades later is a small but recurring genre of feel-good stories. A Montana library received a 35-year-overdue copy of a Richard Matheson novel in 2017 — returned with a $200 donation from a man who said it had "just been bugging me" and admitted he'd read it at least 25 times. A California library received two books in 2016 that had been checked out in 1983, accompanied by a handwritten note that said simply: "I found these in a closet. Sorry."
What these stories have in common is that nobody made the people send them back. No statute of limitations was running. No one was chasing them down. They did it because it was the right thing to do, and because carrying a small dishonesty for 40 years apparently gets heavier over time.
The Unstrung Harp is back on a shelf at Booklegger in Eureka. The first edition is in good shape. The person who took it got sober, found their footing, and eventually found the book in a box in their garage and decided to do the right thing with it.
Forty years later. But better late than never.
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