The Bookstore Sisters (The Once Upon a Time Bookshop Stories)

When I open a hefty novel, I know I’m essentially moving in. Reading a short story, on the other hand, is a quick getaway, a visit to another world in the space of an afternoon. In Alice Hoffman’s short story, The Bookstore Sisters, readers plunge into a world so vivid that you’ll imagine a salt breeze blowing through your house as you read.

Isabel Gibson has been dreaming of escaping since she was a child: leaping over the barrier of the ocean surrounding Brinkley’s Island. But even after she made it to New York City, she never felt satisfied. When she receives a letter from someone on the island asking for help, she has a chance to find out if crossing back over the water will be a step backward or forward in her life.

Alice Hoffman’s writing transported me as I read Isabel’s story, conjuring the dusty back room of the Once upon a Time Bookshop, the heirloom flowers that climb the walls of Red Rose Cottage, and the lupines that turn the whole island blue in summer. One image, though, sticks with me: Isabel and her sister Sophie as young girls, reading outside by the light of the summer moon until they fall asleep in the grass. I found myself willing Isabel to remember the child she was and the trust she and her sister once shared. In my short visit to Brinkley’s Island, I found a second home.

—Kjersti Egerdahl, Editor