Tome is Where the Heart Is

A sweet story comes from the Daily Mail. It involves an LA woman, a trip around the world, and found love in Wigtown, Scotland.

From the piece...

Imagine doodling on a pad a picture of how you’d like your life to look, and your daydream coming true. That’s exactly what happened to Jessica Fox when she committed her vision of her ideal life to paper. Living in Los Angeles, Jessica was focused on her career. At 25, she had started her own production company, her first film was being shown on the film-festival circuit and she was a consultant media director for Nasa. She loved her job. ‘It was career, career, career with me,’ she says. ‘Romantically, I hadn’t found anyone who intrigued me. I would have rather had a man hand me his screenplay than his phone number.’

But something in Jessica was crying out for a change. She’d long held a fantasy of working in a second-hand bookshop by the sea in Scotland. Why Scotland? ‘I don’t know,’ says Jessica. ‘I just knew it had to be there. It felt right.’ She drew pictures of herself bundled up in scarves, in a bookshop, then cycling down to a windswept beach with a packed lunch, ‘and contemplating the universe. I thought it might just be an idea for another screenplay, but the vision was so strong.’

When the opportunity to take an extended holiday came up two and a half years ago, she decided to follow her dream. ‘I wanted my life to be as adventurous as the movies I was writing,’ she says. She Googled ‘used bookshop, Scotland’ and Wigtown appeared. Wigtown, in Dumfries and Galloway, is Scotland’s National Book Town, with 11 bookshops near the sea. ‘I felt as though I’d struck gold,’ Jessica recalls. One, the largest second-hand bookshop in Scotland, intrigued her. So she e-mailed The Book Shop, trying to sound as normal as possible. ‘I told the owner it was my dream to holiday at a bookshop by the sea, and I attached a picture of myself waving.’ A few hours later, there was a one-sentence reply: ‘Tell me about yourself.’ Jessica decided the owner must be a ‘sweet 80-year-old grandfather, typing with one finger’.

Unbeknown to her, Shaun Bythell, the owner, was 37 and famous locally for his shy charm and long curls.