The Museum of Second Chances by Jo LeeversMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Have not read this author before but found this to be a completely enjoyable book. Most people, I suppose, like myself, beachcomb but like things such as seashells, pretty pebbles, sand polished glass shards, interesting pieces of driftwood and consider anything else either uninteresting or irritating, having been deemed the products of mindless littering. Not so Evelyn Silver, a 61 year old spinster living in the seaside town of Portheast in Cornish. She has no family, both parents having died and no other siblings. She moved to London in her 20's to work at the British Museum but some mysterious misfortune destroyed her chances at a promising career so she returned to the seaside home in which she'd grown. A tiny town everyone knew her history--a foundling with a piece of lace pinned to the blanket in which she'd been wrapped, who'd been adopted somewhere up north by the Silvers. She cherished the piece of lace and when Mr Silver gave her place for her to store it and the incredible collection of discarded shoes, pieces of boat boards, balls of twine and pieces of plastic she'd collected from the beach and named it the Portheast Museum of Maritime Curiosities she eagerly took on the role of curator. Each morning she took a tote bag to the beach and brought back more pieces for her collection--broken china, odd shaped pebbles, a dog's leash. Not many people came to peruse these things but she kept busy on the beach and rummaged garage sales and thrift shops for other items that represented daily life and was quite content. Her only discontent focused on her desire to know who a real mother had been and hoped that one day someone would recognize the lace scrap and realize who she was.
Life went on for Evelyn in this way until the town councilors came to call on her and Della, her next door neighbor who ran a bakery in the next boatshed. It seemed that a development company wanted to buy the sheds, raze them and build a hotel. Della and Evelyn were renting from the town and so were told they would need to move out when their leases ended. Della was not going to take that laying down and so managed to persuade Evelyn to appeal to the townsfolk for help. The idea being that the items in the museum were part of the town's history. And with that, Evelyn's life and the dusty old museum found themselves turned upside down and inside out--with secrets and stories unearthed in ways no one could have expected!!
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