The Reflection Principle

A love story sixty years in the making... and only just beginning. At seventy-eight, Linda Berg's life is one of quiet routines and gentle decline. A widowed former linguistics professor, she is methodically preparing for the end, her most exciting event a weekly grocery delivery. Then, the dreams begin. Not just memories, but visceral, waking-life immersions into 1961, reliving her passionate, heartbreaking high school romance with Alan Chow. These would be mere poignant echoes of a first love—if the dreams weren't starting to leave physical evidence in her present. A note passed in class appears on her nightstand. The library book they shared materializes on her chest. A locket given in a tearful goodbye is clutched in her waking hand. Convinced she's either experiencing a brilliant madness or a miraculous anomaly, Linda approaches the mystery as she would a research project, documenting what she calls "The Reflection Principle." But when her investigations lead her to the real, living Alan—also widowed, living just ninety minutes away—their cautious reconnection unveils an impossible truth: the dreams are not hers alone. Together, two sharp, skeptical minds in fading bodies must navigate a shared phantom past that is insistently, physically, invading their present. They must confront old regrets, decode the rules of a love that defies time, and decide whether this second chance—delivered through dreams—is a gift, a symptom, or the most important journey of their lives. The Reflection Principle is a gorgeously written, profoundly moving novel about first love and last chances, the mysteries of memory, and the unexpected ways life can grant a breathtaking, final chapter.