A Paris stroll, a dusty book, and a twist of destiny. Anne Parish’s childhood copy of Jack Frost returned to her after decades.
Picture it: Paris, summer of 1929. The sun glimmers on the Seine, Notre Dame’s spires rise in the distance, and little green bookstalls, bouquinistes, as the Parisians call them, line the riverbanks like treasure chests.
The atmosphere? Pure magic.
What came next? Even more magical.
A Stroll Along the Seine
Among the browsers that day was American novelist and children’s author Anne Parish, on a leisurely stroll with her husband, Charles Albert Corliss. The couple was doing exactly what any book lover would dream of doing in Paris: wandering by the water, flipping through stacks of secondhand books, and breathing in that delicious scent of old paper, stories, and history.
Anne had always loved books, so this kind of experience was her dream. The city seemed to hum with literary magic as she and her husband meandered through the Parisian crowds. But neither of them had any idea that she was about to stumble across something extraordinary… something that would bridge decades and continents.
A Familiar Title in a Foreign City
While browsing through one of the bouquiniste stalls between Notre Dame and the Louvre, a small, worn book caught Anne’s eye: Jack Frost and Other Stories.
The title tugged at a faint memory. It was the name of a book she’d adored as a child all the way back home in Colorado Springs, a little collection of stories she had long since forgotten, or at least thought she had. The cover was battered, the corners curled, the pages yellowed, but there it was, unmistakably familiar.
Anne didn’t hesitate. She immediately picked it up, that very same childhood excitement brewing in her gut just as it had done when she’d read the stories as a young girl.
The Skeptical Husband and the Memory Test
Her husband, however, wasn’t quite as enchanted by this chance find. To him, it was just an old children’s book. It was a pretty curiosity, sure, but hardly a Parisian treasure.
Anne smiled and explained it was special because it had been one of her favorite books when she was little. He raised an eyebrow and asked what she remembered about it.
Anne thought for a moment and recalled a story inside, one about a girl named Dorothy who hated her nose. So her husband opened the book, thumbing through the pages, and found the exact story she mentioned.
But that wasn’t all that he found.
A Parisian Coincidence for the Ages
As he turned a few more pages, something on the front flyleaf caught his attention: faint pencil writing, slightly faded with age.
There, scrawled in the uneven hand of a child, were the words:
“Anne Parrish, 209 N. Weber St., Colorado Springs.”
Anne froze. It couldn’t be. Surely?
And yet… it was.
The name was his wife’s. The address was her childhood home. The handwriting? Her own, from years ago.
She hadn’t just found a copy of her favorite childhood book. She had somehow, miraculously, found her own copy. And that was that. She had to buy it back again, thousands of miles and decades away from where she’d last seen it.
Let’s pause for a second. What are the odds? Of all the bouquiniste stalls in Paris, of all the old children’s books in the world, Anne just happened to pull out the very copy she had once owned as a little girl in Colorado.
You couldn’t script it better. It’s literally straight out of a Disney film.
It’s the kind of story that feels almost enchanted, and the sort of coincidence that makes you wonder if the universe occasionally likes to wink at us.
The Magic of Memory and the Power of Books
For Anne, who had built her career out of words and imagination, this wasn’t just a random discovery. It was deeply personal. It was like a reminder of where her love of stories began.
That little book had likely traveled through time and space: passed between hands, sold, resold, and somehow found its way across an ocean to rest on a Parisian riverbank, where it lay waiting, as if on purpose, for its original owner to return.
In that moment, Jack Frost and Other Stories became more than paper and ink. It became a living bridge between who Anne had been then: the wide-eyed Colorado girl who scribbled her name inside her favorite book, and who she’d become: a successful author walking along the Seine.
A Story for All of Us
Anne’s experience is the kind of tale every book lover secretly dreams about. After all, we all have that one book that changed us when we read it. That we read again and again until we were too old to enjoy it the same way. Then, more often than not, it disappears.
Maybe a parent donated it, lost it, lent it to a friend who never returned it. But what if one day we stumbled upon it again, halfway across the world? That’s the wonder of this story. It’s not just about Anne. It’s about anyone who’s ever felt that tug of nostalgia when they open an old book and smell the past.
And for many of us, it’s a pull to re-experience our past. It’s a pull to search for the book that was our first love. It’s a wave of nostalgia and a push to rediscover what makes us, us. Even if we’re unlikely to find the very one we owned as kids.
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Millie Ramm
Millie has been writing since she was a child, and has spent more time with her nose in books than anywhere else. She has been ghostwriting novels and editing for the past few years, and when not working she is curled up with her cats, looking for her next read.
