I’m obsessed with finding a book.

I’ve always had a bit of trouble with my ADD at the end of a day. Meaning, if I don’t set myself a very specific bedtime routine, I can’t get to sleep. It can take many forms (at the moment, it’s “get up to bed, make sure Rob covers me up in the Special Way, and play Harvest Moon for 20 minutes,”) but about 10 years ago, my routine was to read for half an hour or so before going to sleep. And not just read any book. It was always the exact same book. I know, I know, wouldn’t that get boring? But there was something oddly comforting about being able to open up the novel at any page and know exactly what was going on and what was going to happen. No suspense, just the … ritual I guess, of reading the words, would calm my brain down enough to be ready for sleep. I read this same book every night before bed for about six months, then during a move (this was when I was in university) I lost it. Many nighttime rituals have taken place since then, but I remember this book in particular. Maybe it was that after a day of reading uni. texts about the psyches of serial killers or biblical meanings or whatever I just needed something to put my brain cells to sleep. I don’t know. It was just very comforting is all. So I miss it.

It was a historical/romantic novel about a lady in the 1800s who marries this sailor guy she’s only just met, in order to get away from her abusive brother-in-law (how very Mills and Boone, no?), only to be dumped off at his house on the Outer Banks without so much as a how-do-you-do (or a wedding night, for that matter). Poor thing ends up taking care of his madman grandmother who has a predilection to setting fires and shaving her own head, while he gallivants off sailing the world. There are natural disasters (I liked the detail of there being corks in the walls of the house, so as to let water through during the semi-annual floods) and Loose Women trying to steal her man, but of course everything turns out alright in the end; the two main characters end up (surprise!) in love, and the old woman stops trying to ignite the chicken coop.

And, of course, for the life of me I can’t remember what the book was called, who wrote it, or anything about it aside from the fact that there was a picture of the ocean on the cover. I swear I’ll find it though. It was probably a Harlequin. Yes, yes, I know, not exactly Le Comte de Monte Cristo but it’s got SENTIMENTAL value, dangit!