The Tragedy at Central Library

In regard to the pain so many of us feel over damage to the old Central Library:

My first novel, “Tell Your Sons: a Novel of the Napoleonic Wars,” was the first book to be published by the then-new firm of Farrar, Straus & Co., in 1946. I was 29 years old that year of publication, and had been researching and writing the book since age 11; thanks to the (then) good offices of the State Library in Sacramento, I had drawn material from more than 1,500 titles.

Los Angeles Central was the one source to recognize the quality of the research that had gone into that long-forgotten book. The library notified me that it had cross-referenced it out of the class of fiction as a genuine and dependable source for other students of the era.

Now a genuinely burnt-out case who has not published since 1963, I am made to realize the highest recognition I ever received as a writer came from the Central Library in Los Angeles.

WILLA GIBBS

Palm Desert