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Monday afternoon’s mail delivery to Booklegger in Old Town Eureka contained a small, mysterious package. The contents were bubble-wrapped, and the handwritten return address was illegible. 

“[S]o we had no idea if it was promotional material about a book or who knows what,” owner Jennifer McFadden recalled in a social media post published later that afternoon. 

Katy Longshore, one of the used bookstore’s employees, was working at the time and said McFadden almost decided to head home without opening the parcel.

“But I said, “No, you have to open it!’” Longshore said when we stopped by the shop earlier today. “So she opened it up, and and it was this typed letter from someone who had had been in [to the store] in the 1980s.”

The letter reads as follows:

Booklegger,

I am returning this Edward Gorey first edition to you because I stole it from the store sometime in the early 1980’s. I was a student at HSU with a horrible drug and alcohol problem. 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. I proceeded to clean up my past and make something meaningful out of my life. Somehow this little book escaped my notice for 20 years until I came across it cleaning out my garage last week. 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. I do believe it has increased in value while waiting to be rediscovered in its cardboard box. I hope that you and the store are thriving up there on the beautiful Humboldt Bay. I was the chef at the Waterfront Oyster Bar for a while and miss it.

[Signature and phone number]

Please text me if there is anything further I might do to right this wrong.

The note of apology was accompanied by a $100 bill. McFadden, in her social media post, said the contents of the package were “so unexpected and touching [that] the three of us who were working ended up with tears in our eyes.”

Reached by phone this afternoon, she reiterated how much the package meant.

“I just thought it was exceptional that after such a long time, this person still had the impulse to try to make up for a mistake he made and regretted,” she said. “It would be so much easier to just feel bad about it but not act on those feelings.”

Such a gesture takes courage, she added. 

“I suspect it made him feel much better. It certainly made us feel emotional.”

The returned book was a first-edition copy of “The Unstrung Harp,” a 1953 book by Edward Gorey, whose darkly humorous pen-and-ink drawings depicting characters in Victorian and Edwardian settings have earned him a loyal fanbase, particularly among goths. 

“Gorey has so many fans; his stuff is all over the place these days,” McFadden said. In fact, Booklegger carries a variety of items adorned with the late artist’s illustrations, including tote bags, pins and children’s books. 

After doing some research on the value of this returned copy of “Unstrung Harp,” staff priced it at $125. But McFadden said the note and the gesture were far more valuable. She plans to text the man to tell him how much it meant and to say she hopes he feels unburdened. 

McFadden (who, I should note for the sake of disclosure, is a friend of mine) regularly posts amusing, touching and even profound vignettes of customer interactions at the store, so if you’re not yet following Booklegger on Facebook, you should certainly get on that.