The Reflection Principle

A love story sixty years in the making... and only just beginning.

At seventy-eight, Linda Berg's life is one of quiet routines and gentle decline. A widowed former linguistics professor, she is methodically preparing for the end, her most exciting event a weekly grocery delivery. Then, the dreams begin.

Not just memories, but visceral, waking-life immersions into 1961, reliving her passionate, heartbreaking high school romance with Alan Chow. These would be mere poignant echoes of a first love-if the dreams weren't starting to leave physical evidence in her present. A note passed in class appears on her nightstand. The library book they shared materializes on her chest. A locket given in a tearful goodbye is clutched in her waking hand.

Convinced she's either experiencing a brilliant madness or a miraculous anomaly, Linda approaches the mystery as she would a research project, documenting what she calls "The Reflection Principle." But when her investigations lead her to the real, living Alan-also widowed, living just ninety minutes away-their cautious reconnection unveils an impossible truth: the dreams are not hers alone.

Together, two sharp, skeptical minds in fading bodies must navigate a shared phantom past that is insistently, physically, invading their present. They must confront old regrets, decode the rules of a love that defies time, and decide whether this second chance-delivered through dreams-is a gift, a symptom, or the most important journey of their lives.

The Reflection Principle is a gorgeously written, profoundly moving novel about first love and last chances, the mysteries of memory, and the unexpected ways life can grant a breathtaking, final chapter.