The Record Keeper

Dorothy Oakes has spent twenty-three years as the municipal clerk of Silver Springs, Ohio, keeping the town's records with a precision that borders on devotion. She arrives at seven forty-five every morning, makes reliable coffee, and maintains a filing system so thorough that she can locate a piece of correspondence from 1934 without hesitation. Her life is organized, complete, and exactly the way she wants it. She has a garden nobody sees, a collection of mysteries, and biweekly letters to her oldest friend, June. She does not need anything to change. Then the county sends an architectural historian to conduct a historic preservation survey, and the historian turns out to be James Beaumont, the brother Earl Beaumont has never mentioned in thirty years. James sees buildings the way Dorothy sees records, as documents that tell stories if you know how to read them. When he looks at a cornice and finds a civic statement from 1889, Dorothy sees her town through new eyes. When he looks at her, she begins to see herself through new eyes. As the assessment uncovers the historic significance of the aging Hayward Mill, the town must decide whether to save the building that once defined it. Dorothy finds herself at the center of the effort, working alongside a man who has made her question the difference between being needed and being wanted, between a sufficient life and one that is full. Set against the gentle rhythms of small-town Ohio, The Record Keeper is a story about the courage it takes to open the gate when someone asks to see the garden you have been tending alone for seventeen years. Book 3 in the Silver Springs Series. Can be read as a standalone.