Writing professor’s first novel paints L.A. as a literary paradise

In 2010, Amy Meyerson, then a student in USC Dornsife’s Masters of Professional Writing program, pitched an idea for a story to her thesis advisor, novelist and then USC Dornsife Lecturer Judith Freeman. It involved a small bookshop, a literary scavenger hunt and a shocking family secret.

“The first time I met with [Freeman], she said my idea could be a novel,” said Meyerson, now an assistant professor (teaching) of writing in USC Dornsife’s Writing Program. She proved Freeman right by publishing that novel earlier this year.

The Bookshop of Yesterdays (Park Row Books, 2018) tells the story of Miranda Brooks, a young history teacher who left her hometown of Los Angeles to live in Philadelphia. After her estranged uncle’s unexpected death, she returns home to learn he has left her his bookstore, Prospero Books. However, it turns out he has also left her a scavenger hunt where every clue is hidden in a novel. The hunt sends her on a journey through Los Angeles and concludes when she uncovers a deep family secret.

A West Coast transplant herself, Meyerson was drawn to L.A. as her primary setting because of its unique past.

“I grew up in Philadelphia … where we learned a lot about the Revolutionary War and the early republic,” said Meyerson. “During that time, California had its complete own history. I didn’t learn anything about it until I moved to L.A.”

The Bookshop of Yesterdays has become a bestseller in the United States and Canada.

Meyerson intentionally distanced herself from the images of the beach and Hollywood that many associate with L.A., instead sending Miranda on a journey through the city’s diverse neighborhoods. Prospero Books and L.A.’s Silver Lake community serve as the center of the novel, though her adventure takes her to West L.A., Pasadena and the mountain resort community of Big Bear Lake in San Bernardino County to the east. Meyerson said she also wanted the book to be a celebration of Los Angeles’ abundant literary history, something that often gets overshadowed by the film industry.

While most of the places Miranda visits in the novel represent real spots around L.A., the family secret was based on a more abstract inspiration from Meyerson’s experience.

“I’m really interested in estrangements,” she said. “My mom and her father became estranged when I was an infant, which shaped my family dynamic. I didn’t grow up with a ton of close extended family, and one of the things that struck me as I got older was that I didn’t know why. I just knew that my grandfather had done something terrible to my mother and thereafter wasn’t a part of my life.”

While the argument that separated her mother and grandfather inspired the difficult family dynamics in her novel, Meyerson assures that the secret Miranda uncovers is not autobiographical. Like the scavenger hunt, the family dynamics at work in the story are entirely fictional.

The hardest part of writing The Bookshop of Yesterdays, Meyerson said, was selecting the books where Miranda’s clues would be hidden. Meyerson wanted the clue-holding books to be those that many readers would recognize and that tied into the part of Miranda’s family’s history she was uncovering from the clue. If Meyerson changed part of her novel’s storyline, she would have to go back and change which book held the clue, as well.

The result of her years of writing and editing is what Meyerson calls a celebration of bookstores and the communities they build; however, The Bookshop of Yesterdays is also a celebration of stories as Meyerson weaves her favorite classics into her text. Including her personal favorites gives the novel a necessary element for success, she said.

“I always tell my students that if you’re not interested in what you’re writing, then your reader isn’t going to be interested in it.”

Judging by the novel’s positive reviews, as well as its bestseller status in the U.S. and Canada, Meyerson was very interested in her subject matter.