The Library of Lost Dollhouses: A Novel

Prologue

New Hampshire, 1950

The woman steps back from her workbench, surveying the completed boxy wooden structure. It’s a shell, not yet a dollhouse. Tomorrow, piece by piece, clapboard siding and roofing will be applied. After that, windows, shutters, doors, and a chimney will be installed. Then the dollhouse maker will turn to the interior. She’ll wire the place for electricity. Then she’ll carve and cut baseboards, millwork, tiling, trim, and flooring. But before she installs any of these pieces, she’ll place sheets of wallpaper in every room, making sure to use the right amount of paste. Too much and the paper will grow soggy and wrinkle. Too little will cause peeling. Each sheet has been designed for a specific wall within the dollhouse. Their placement is important, because the patterns tell a secret story.

The miniaturist stretches her arms overhead and exhales. Late-afternoon sunshine spills across the plank floor of her workshop like maple syrup sliding from a spoon, making the air warm and languorous. The sweetened scent of the forest rises from freshly milled pine. When she lowers her arms, a nearby stack of mail in a basket catches her gaze. Letters from prospective clients. How do these women find her? Word of her dollhouses and their secrets travels on whispers over the rims of teacups, the steps of front porches, and across kitchen tables and market counters. Until the dollhouse maker delved into the world of keeping other women’s secrets, she had no idea there were so many possibilities: women write books and articles and publish them under men’s names; they print and distribute subversive newspapers anonymously; they covertly offer illicit medical services to those in need; they bear children they cannot claim as their own; they spend years developing inventions, only to have them stolen by men.

The dollhouse maker documents all this—accomplishments, betrayals, and forbidden passions—in her miniatures.

Her clients’ stories are sometimes haunting, often heartbreaking, but always powerful and inspiring. The dollhouse maker feels solidarity with these perfectly lovely women and their imperfect lives, because she hides her own secret, one not recorded in any dollhouse. She’s learned to push away her own shame. Her penance comes in the form of unburdening other women of the truths they hide.

At this moment, the dollhouse maker exists solely in the service of her client from Arlington, Virginia, a seemingly ordinary woman. The wife of a newspaper reporter. A mother of three.

Eventually, when the miniaturist reveals the finished product to her client, the woman will peer inside its six rooms. The miniaturist will hand her a magnifying glass and point to the parlor.

At first glance, the woman will only see swaths of flowers running along walls. When her vision adjusts to the magnification, she’ll see how the dollhouse maker has taken her encrypted story and used its tiny collection of letters and numbers. From a distance, the small points blur together to create the wallpaper print.

This client has been deciphering messages since the early ’40s. Except for the dollhouse maker and the officials who oversee her work, no one knows about her secret vocation. Her husband believes she takes in typing assignments and thinks the couriers who come and go from their house are from a law office in Washington, D.C., not from the US government.

During their initial meeting, when the client worried someone would spot the strange pattern hidden in the wallpaper, the dollhouse maker reassured her: no one will notice. Secrets can exist in plain sight because people only see what they expect. Sad, but true.

The dollhouse maker has employed a variety of techniques to conceal her clients’ stories in the dollhouses. Secret compartments, fake walls, tiny books, furniture with camouflaged panels, but never before has she designed a pattern with code. She’s particularly proud of this deception and is already eager to show her client the finished product.

But that will have to wait.

For now, with the miniature’s carcass complete, the dollhouse maker is done working for the day. She sweeps up shavings, splinters, and dust, then reaches behind her to untie the heavy canvas apron she wears.

As she’s switching off lights, preparing to leave for the evening, the shrill ring of the telephone startles her. When she reaches for its receiver, she has no idea how her life is about to change. She’ll journey to a new place. Unload her secrets. And rediscover her first love.

1

Tildy

2024

No one knew a secret room existed in the library until Tildy Barrows found it.

The discovery occurred on Monday, February 26, at 8:21 a.m., a time when Tildy would have normally been sitting at her desk in her office, cup of coffee in hand, reviewing her day’s schedule and fretting over how to dig the Belva Curtis LeFarge Library out of the deep financial hole it currently found itself in.

Instead, Tildy was inside a storage closet on the library’s top floor, preoccupied with organizing several vintage gowns and accessories once owned by the place’s founder, Belva Curtis LeFarge. As Tildy slid a fox stole onto a hanger, a glimmer of something metallic flashing behind swirls of tulle crinolines and taffeta ball gowns caught her attention. Intrigued, she pushed the garments aside, squinting into the dim light.

A latch.

Alongside the latch, a crack in the wall appeared. What in the world? Tildy reached out, tracing her index finger along the crack, and when she stepped closer for a better look she realized the crack was actually a doorway.

As head curator, she was supposed to know every square inch of the Belva Curtis LeFarge Library and she took her job seriously. To call her hands-on was an understatement. Tildy managed all aspects of running the small historic institution. She gave tours. Oversaw acquisitions. Called a repairman when there was a problem with the furnace or air-conditioning system. In fact, atop her desk, Tildy kept a bullet journal outlining every task of her day. By the time she left the library each evening, she made it her mission to cross off every item on that to-do list. For Tildy, no task at the library was too small, too lowly.

So how could she have missed this door? Books, paintings, periodicals, journals, films, ephemera, vintage clothes, music, maps, manuscripts, even an old bear claw necklace from the Lewis and Clark expedition could be found at the library. But a hidden door? This was a first.

Tildy rubbed her eyes. She really needed coffee.

The morning had started normally enough. Tildy was a big believer in the stabilizing power of routines. During the years of her father’s illness, she’d learned the best way to mitigate his cognitive deterioration was through a carefully followed daily schedule, so she now applied the same practice to her own life. That Monday she’d arrived at the library at her usual time—7:30 a.m. sharp—and started the coffee machine behind the circulation counter, but when she got to her desk and prepared to settle in, she heard a strange sound. A distant rumble, deep and low like thunder. The noise quickly intensified, groaning and grinding, and then ended in a long, exhausted hiss. Tildy twisted to look out the nearest window and there in the middle of the street, a bright yellow school bus had stopped crookedly, its front bumper enveloped in smoke. The vehicle’s positioning was obviously worrisome, but when Tildy looked closer and spotted wide-eyed little faces filling the bus’s windows, she leapt from her desk chair and raced outside. The pungent stink of burning rubber hovered over the library’s courtyard. Though it was a chilly morning in late February, Tildy didn’t even feel the cold. As she neared the bus, its door folded open, revealing the driver’s weary face.

What happened? Tildy asked, pulling her phone from her pocket, ready to call 911.

Might be something to do with the fuel filter, the driver grumbled.

From the front seat a small girl raised her hand. I need to use the bathroom.

You’ll have to hold it, Saffron, the driver said.

Tildy looked beyond the small girl, assessing the rest of the worried little faces watching her expectantly. Tending to a school bus breakdown had definitely not been on her to-do list for the day and that quick burst of adrenaline she’d felt only moments earlier was already wearing off. She needed coffee. But these were elementary school kids. Twenty-four of them, to be precise.

An older girl in the second row turned her head to look through the smudged window at the library. Whoa, fancy.

That building looks like a wedding cake, the girl sitting next to her added. The other kids turned, intrigued by the mention of dessert. The girl was right. In the crisp winter sunlight, the white limestone of the three-story rectangular library gleamed like vanilla buttercream, carefully smoothed with a pastry spatula and sprinkled with cane sugar. To the imaginative eye, the decorative garlands, classical pilasters, and Corinthian columns festooning the facade could have been piped into place by a skilled baker.

Set amid the gleaming, newly renovated, seismically reinforced mansions of Pacific Heights, the Belva Curtis LeFarge Library clung to a ridge, overlooking Cow Hollow and the Marina. Its picturesque placement and grande old dame charm made it popular with tourists as a top spot to snap an iconic shot of the San Francisco Bay. Many people admired the lovely old Beaux-Arts building, but for those types who preferred sleek industrial design and minimalism—and San Francisco teemed with those types—they considered the library unfashionable and long in the tooth.

The sounds of children chattering brought Tildy’s attention back to the bus.

She turned to the driver. "I’m Mathilda Barrows, the head curator at the Belva Curtis LeFarge Library. How about the kids come inside with me so you can sort things out? I’m used to having school field trips, and they’ll love having the place to themselves before it opens to the public. It’ll be just like From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler." She smiled.

The reference to one of Tildy’s all-time favorite books went nowhere with the bus driver, but there was no time to be disappointed because the little girl named Saffron piped up again.

"Hello! I really need to pee."

The bus driver hauled herself to her feet, placed her hands on her hips, and faced out toward her young passengers. Kids, here’s the deal: while I figure out what’s up with this bus, you’re all going inside this library with Ms.— The driver looked at Tildy expectantly.

Barrows. Ms. Barrows, Tildy filled in.

"Go with Ms. Barrows and if I get any reports of disrespectful behavior, and I’m talking about anything—I promise you, there will be consequences. Everyone got it?"

The students nodded and filed off the bus as Tildy recounted them—still twenty-four in total.

Welcome to the Belva Curtis LeFarge Library, she announced, walking backward in full tour guide mode.

"The Bella what?" asked one boy, pulling a goofy face that made the other kids giggle.

I know, it’s a mouthful, right? But here’s a little tip: most of us just call it the Bel. Tildy propped open the heavy oak front door. Go ahead and leave your coats and backpacks in the foyer. And guess what? Since we have the place to ourselves, you don’t have to use your quiet library voices.

She expected to see immediate excitement, but the kids just shuffled past, yawning. Tildy frowned. Tough crowd.

All was quiet in the library except the rustling of jackets and the occasional squeak of sneakers. As the kids took in the shiny marble floors and paintings lining the walls—a glorious abstract seascape by Valadon and minimalist desert landscape by O’Keeffe—they straightened from their slouches and stopped rubbing their drippy noses and picking their wedgies. Tildy had seen this before, the Bel’s effect on its visitors. Say what you want about old buildings and the headache of maintaining them, but the fact remains: they make an impression.

While Saffron and three others skittered to the bathroom, the rest of the kids milled around the foyer.

Hey, a dog! a boy called. The other students quickly gathered to see what the commotion was about.

You found Gruffy, Tildy said, joining them and pointing at the brass statue. See that golden patch on his snout? If you pat Gruffy right there, it’s good luck.

Why’s he here? one of the kids asked.

The library’s founder had a beloved French bulldog for many years. When Gruffy died, she had a statue made of him to stand guard over the place.

He’s cute, a girl said, patting the worn spot. For such a little dog, his ears were pretty big.

Tildy agreed. If you keep your eyes peeled, you might find statues of more animals.

More? How many pets did this Belva lady have?

Gruffwood was the only one, Tildy said. But she liked animals.

Even in her library?

Belva was an unusual lady. She liked to do things her own way, Tildy explained, launching into her usual tour guide spiel. Her grandfather was one of the principal investors in the transcontinental railroad, so she was very wealthy and grew up in a big house, not far from here on Nob Hill. During the 1906 earthquake, that house burned down, but Belva wasn’t there because she’d moved to Europe. While traveling through Paris, she met the man of her dreams—a handsome aristocrat, Comte LeFarge—and she married him. It was just like a fairy tale.

The kids had stopped patting the dog and were watching Tildy, intrigued.

Belva and her husband lived in a big, beautiful house in Paris and had a baby boy, but then tragedy struck. Her beloved husband died, so she and her son moved back here to channel their grief into helping the community by building this library. It was finished in 1926, and she lived here until she died.

"Wait, she lived here and it was a library? Could anyone just walk in?" a boy asked.

During the library’s open hours, sure.

She lived here surrounded by books? Are you for real? another boy asked.

I am. Her private apartment was on the top floor.

Hold up. An older girl placed a hand on her hip. If she had enough money to build this place, why didn’t she build a separate house too?

Tildy shrugged, smiling. Don’t you think this would be a cool place to live?

The kids considered this.

Do you live here? one girl asked.

I wish.

"You should. You’d be just like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She lived in a big fancy old house filled with books and art. And you kinda look like her," the girl said, smiling, pleased with her own logic.

The others agreed, nodding excitedly.

Tildy ran her fingers self-consciously through her ordinary shoulder-length brown hair, embarrassed by how delighted the girl’s compliment made her feel. Clad in her usual basic black pants and navy button-up shirt, she was about as far as you could get from resembling a Disney princess, but she’d imagined herself living in the Bel many times.

She leaned closer to the kids and, in a conspiratorial tone, whispered, "Well, if I did live here, this is where I’d spend all my time."

And with that, Tildy stepped backward into the Main Reading Room, swooping her hands like a magician letting a hidden dove take flight. The kids reacted exactly as she’d hoped: they let out a collective gasp and took a few steps closer to her, turning in circles, gaping at the triple-tiered, intricately carved dark cherry bookshelves filling the west wall; the arcade-styled balconies on the east and north side of the space; and the rows and rows of classic study desks on the ground floor. Slowly their gazes traveled three stories upward to the brilliant stained glass overhead.

Magical, isn’t it? Tildy was not normally someone prone to hyperbole, but in the case of the stained-glass ceiling, magical was entirely appropriate.

Of the Bel’s many charms, certainly one of its most notable was the Main Reading Room’s art nouveau–style stained-glass ceiling. At that time of morning, dazzling fingers of pale sunlight flexed through the ceiling’s intricate pattern of colorful flowers, leaves, and birds, bathing the room below in a rainbow of gold, emerald, coral, cobalt, rose, cerulean, and salmon.

Mesmerized, the kids fell silent, but an impatient throat clearing soon broke the spell. Uh, Ms. Barrows?

Tildy turned to find the bus driver, hand on hip, standing in the library’s foyer. The bus is running again. I gotta get these kids to school.

Okay. Tildy was gratified to hear disappointed grumbles from the kids. Saffron and a few others went to the bathroom, so let me hurry them along.

As Tildy jogged across the Main Reading Room to the front hallway, the sound of laughter reached her, but it seemed to be coming from overhead, not from the closest ground-floor bathroom. Where had the kids gone? Tildy hurried up a flight of stairs, and then another, following the giggles and whispers to the Map Room on the top floor, a space that once served as Belva’s private apartment.

There, she found little Saffron and three of her classmates gathered around an open storage closet. One boy crouched over a fox stole lying on the ground, assessing it warily, while another girl held up a peach-colored 1950s satin ball gown, admiring it. At the sight of Tildy, their youthful smiles collapsed into guilty expressions.

This door was open, I swear it was! the girl holding the vintage dress whimpered. The other kids backed away from the closet, leaving its contents strewn on the floor.

Tildy took the dress and gently placed it on a nearby bench. She could scarcely blame them for being curious. After all, what was the point of a library if not to encourage curiosity? Also, she admired their daring. At their age, she would never have broken away from the group. With her little Harriet the Spy notebook in hand, young Tildy would have clung close to the tour guide, eagerly taking notes as if preparing for a quiz.

Despite the kids’ protests, she guided them back to the library’s foyer, where they reconvened with the rest of the group. Tildy waved goodbye, suddenly sad. She liked having the energy of children in the library, even if they hadn’t exactly followed her directions. But there was no time to dwell. It was already 8:15 a.m., and Tildy was terribly behind on her morning routine.

She hastened back to the Map Room planning to clean up the mess before getting down to the day’s business.

And that was how she’d ended up in the top-floor storage closet, staring at a mysterious door. It looked like a pocket door, the kind that slides into the wall. Also, the doorway was big, far wider than the traditional size.

This was no utilitarian entry to a crawl space. For one thing, a detailed geometric pattern of lines and swirls embellished the door’s latch, giving it a gothic aura of consequence and mystery. (Tildy would learn, in fact, it was a Windsor pattern, a Victorian classic.) Tildy paused, intuiting this represented a momentous juncture, a threshold that would always demark a before and after in her life. Deep in her bones, even at 8:20 a.m., she knew the hidden door was significant—extraordinary even.

She took a breath and tamping down the nerves humming inside her, she reached for the brass latch and threw her weight behind it, sliding the door back to reveal a dark opening. She expected to feel the pressing heat of a sun-warmed attic, but the air was cool, surprisingly fresh. Before stepping inside, she ran her palm along the wall in search of a light switch: once located, she flipped it on. A line of overhead recessed bulbs illuminated the space.

Tildy crossed the threshold and found a small narrow room with a lone shuttered window at the distant end. Two large objects encased in canvas coverings stood between Tildy and the far window.

She approached the first large covered object, noting it was atop a sturdy, well-crafted mahogany cabinet. Cautiously, Tildy lifted the edge of the canvas and found herself peering into a window.

A miniature window.

Like Alice in Wonderland, Tildy felt a dizzying sense of shifting perspective, as if she’d drunk an unlabeled potion and grown to a tremendous size. Gingerly, she eased the canvas cover off and stepped backward, inhaling sharply as she surveyed her discovery.

It was a dollhouse. A magnificent dollhouse.

The neoclassical dollhouse exterior was designed to look like stone. Recognition flickered through Tildy. She knew this building from old photos. It was a re-creation of Hôtel LeFarge, the Paris mansion where Belva had once lived during her marriage in the early 1900s. Tildy circled the miniature and found an open backside revealing interior rooms—thirteen of them. She gasped in delight. Tiny paintings dotted the dollhouse’s walls. Bejeweled chandeliers resembling finely crafted jewelry hung from the ceilings. And the millwork! Elegant wainscoting panels with crisp corners, carved mantels and ceiling canopies, and crown molding daintier than babies’ teeth decorated the rooms.

On the dollhouse’s bottom floor, Tildy spotted a kitchen, its walls covered in tiny white hexagonal tiles. Shelves were filled with copper pots and pans, thimble-size porcelain storage canisters, and jars of pickled vegetables and fruits that looked amazingly real despite being minute in size. Extraordinary. In the other rooms, Tildy recognized several paintings that now hung in the Bel, here in miniature. The dollhouse had a library on its second floor. Rows and rows of miniature books lined its shelves, and a model of a schooner, its rigging as delicate as spiderweb filament, was displayed on a table. Nearby was an elaborately decorated floor globe smaller than a golf ball. The details were incredible, the craftsmanship mind-boggling. Why was this hidden away?

A wave of nostalgia crested over Tildy. She must have been six or seven years old when her mother surprised her at Christmas with a kit for a dollhouse resembling one of San Francisco’s Victorian Painted Ladies. Tildy had spent many hours snuggled up beside her mother in an alcove off the kitchen, building the four-room dollhouse and furnishing it. Later, during Tildy’s first year in college, her mother had died, so working on the dollhouse that dark, rainy Bay Area winter represented nothing but happy memories.

Heart pounding with excitement, Tildy turned to the second dollhouse. It was colossal: four stories high. To remove the cover, she had to rise to the tips of her toes. Once revealed, it reminded Tildy of the type of grand country estate she’d seen on Downton Abbey or in a Jane Austen movie adaptation. Unlike Belva’s Hôtel LeFarge, Tildy couldn’t identify whether the second enormous dollhouse was a replica of a real house or simply a flight of Belva’s imagination.

Latches held the larger dollhouse’s facade panels in place, and Tildy opened them one by one, peering into the structure from different sides. Thirty rooms! She had no idea a dollhouse could be so big and elaborate.

In the grand dollhouse’s main entrance, past a line of tiny tarnished suits of armor standing guard, a grand staircase swept up to a second-floor gallery, where old master–style miniature portraits and landscapes in baroque gilt frames covered the walls. An enfilade of sumptuous staterooms led from one to the next with grandiose furniture small enough to fit on Tildy’s palm. The precision of the artistry staggered her.

The excitement of discovery was as intoxicating as swilling an entire bottle of champagne.

These weren’t children’s toys.

They were works of art.

Tildy felt light-headed with excitement as she surveyed her findings.

But why were these dollhouses hidden?

Tildy’s fingers worried the buttons of her shirt as she stepped back to take in the two dollhouses together. Only then did she notice the drawers in the cabinet below the Hôtel LeFarge dollhouse. In the top, she found more miniatures organized into tiny wooden compartments. Paintings, textiles, chairs, dishes—all kinds of additional miniatures, including Christmas decorations like a tree, wreaths, and wrapped presents. To think of the dollhouse decorated for the holidays made Tildy smile. When she opened the second drawer, another organizer became visible, each of its compartments filled with more dollhouse furnishings. Belva had been quite the collector.

Tildy pushed the drawers back in, straightening, and that’s when one miniature in particular caught her eye. On the dollhouse’s top floor, she recognized a familiar chair in Belva’s bedroom. The Bel still possessed the original full-size art nouveau–styled bergère, upholstered in salmon velvet, down one flight of stairs in the library’s Conservatory. The chair had reportedly been Belva’s favorite spot to read and there were photos in the library’s collection of their patron seated in the chair, her nose buried in a book. Tildy’s gaze continued to roam the miniature room. Over the bed hung another item Tildy recognized: a stylized studio portrait of Jack, Belva’s son, photographed by Dorothea Lange in the late ’20s. The full-size print hung behind the circulation desk on the library’s first floor. Tildy squinted, admiring how it had been scaled down and re-created so effectively in black-and-white pen-and-ink to resemble a photograph.

Tildy’s gaze traveled to another small framed picture next to Belva’s bed. As Tildy stared at the familiar piece, she felt the blood drain from her face. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. In a room filled with surprises, nothing had prepared her for this discovery. Her legs suddenly went rubbery.

The girl in the picture was Tildy’s dead mother.

2

Tildy

2024

Tildy gaped at the miniaturized sketch of her late mother, searching the heart-shaped face for answers. Over the course of her thirty-four years, Tildy had only seen one childhood image of her mother, and now, unexpectedly it had turned up in Belva’s dollhouse. Why? What was it doing here?

The original portrait was an eight-by-ten-inch pastel sketch of Tildy’s late mother, Meg Leigh Barrows, from when she’d been twelve years old. As the one item to survive a house fire during Meg’s girlhood, it was now Tildy’s prized possession and rested on a bookshelf back at her apartment.

Tildy stared at the miniaturized sketch. Even in small form, her mother’s dark wide-set eyes appeared large and lifelike and lent her a surprised and curious expression. Tildy recognized her own pointy chin and the same shy mannerism of tucking it down when she smiled.

Every cord, every muscle, everything seemed to be tightening in Tildy. She didn’t know how to feel, what to think. Why wasn’t she more excited? Tildy had never liked surprises very much. Slowly, she stepped away from the dollhouse and took a deep breath, willing her