Time After Time

Lisa Grunwald's latest novel, Time After Time (#844) is both a ghost story and a tribute to Grand Central Terminal in New York City.  She says she found the idea for this story when browsing in the Columbia University stacks and came upon a non-fiction volume about Grand Central Station while researching a different book.   There she found an anecdote about a distraught young women who showed up at 4:00 a.m..  A kind terminal employee escorted her home to her aunt's place just a few blocks away, but she vanished on the way there.  After searching fruitlessly for her, he knocked on the aunt's door, only to be told that this had happened for thirty-eight years on that date, the day her niece was killed in a gas explosion while Grand Central was under construction.  Ms. Grunwald took this idea and ran with it.

Nora Lansing appears early one December morning in the middle of Grand Central's Main Concourse.  Joe Reynolds, hurrying on his way to a prayer meeting on Track 13 before he begins his shift as a leverman, thinks she is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.  But there is something not quite right about her; her dress is old-fashioned, and on this cold morning, where are her coat and handbag?  He stops to see if he can help her.  She seems confused, but asks to be escorted home to Turtle Bay Gardens, a swanky area of New York City.  They don't get very far from the station when they are confronted by a mugger.  By the time Joe has dealt with him, Nora is gone, leaving only his coat behind on the sidewalk where he last saw her.  It would be several years before he sees her again...

Nora and Joe do find a way to be together within the confines of Grand Central Terminal as they gradually figure out the parameters of their relationship. Even the celestial phenomenon of Manhattanhenge plays a role in their story.  Love and sacrifice bind them together and tear them apart.  Time is the ultimate metaphor here.  It's an intriguing love story.