The first time I ever entered the tiny subterranean apartment of the woman who would eventually marry me, I was struck by a number of things: her large and not especially friendly dog, who regarded me with understandable suspicion; the lack of any extraneous furniture or appurtenances other than those required by an artist who was also a superb cook; and her one small rickety bookshelf, perched over her bed, so that she could reach up with one hand, while supine, and haul down an inky companion, therein to ramble and plumb.

Being a writer, I went right to the bookshelf, which was also blessedly away from the grim and gimlet-eyed dog, and examined her collection. There were four books and four books only, although I later discovered she was a ferocious and omnivorous reader; she later explained that her days were so crammed with work and school that if she had a few moments to read at night she counted herself lucky, and these four books were, perhaps, talismans of a sort, touchstones, compass points, lodestars, old friends, necessary and nutritious companions.

I remember them well, I remember how they leaned on each other there on the incredibly rickety shelf (the whole apartment was like that, and I felt like an unruly giant whose slightest misstep or sneeze would bring tables and shelves crashing to the floor), and I report with a smile that she still owns all four of the books, though now they are surrounded by many other books, for we have been married for nearly thirty years, and our collections long ago merged and mixed and mingled, and now Ellen Gilchrist rubs up against Bernard DeVoto, and Peter Matthiessen shoulders Laurie Colwin, and Annie Dillard is cheek by jowl with Alberto Giacometti, and other interesting pairings like that, making you wonder what riveting conversations are had on the shelves at night, when all is otherwise still until Joseph Conrad begins whispering to Elinor Lipman…

The four were Willa Cather’s fine Song of the Lark, and Harper Lee’s perfect To Kill a Mockingbird, and David James Duncan’s great headlong Pacific Northwest coming-of-age novel The River Why, and best of all, greatest of all, the glorious hilarious epic sprawling wondrous novel The Horse’s Mouth, by the Irishman Joyce Cary, and that was all, just those four, the three lean and the one thick with Cary’s word-wizardry; and now I look back through the years at that shelf and wonder if those four books did not nearly encapsulate and characterize and explain and draw a collective map to the woman who married me.

There was a Northwest classic, filled with burling rivers and dense spruce forests and laughter and love and confusion and epiphany and rain; and those are her things, her place, her scent. There was the story of an American woman rising to be a terrific artist, and realizing that she could steer her own life, and not be beholden to a lover or a husband or the harness, however pleasant, of family; and this is her lifelong work and story. There is the story of a bright brave American girl and a beloved stalwart father, who teaches integrity and grace by his very being; and that is her story, and her father. And there is the novel I love above all others, filled with humor and struggle and prickly grace and a yearning to marshal color and shape and paint and canvas in such ways as to sing and celebrate the entire universe and everything in it; and that is her life and work and story, as I have had many occasions to see.

I am sure she did not choose those four books as a message to such amorous suitors as me; I am sure she did not herself consider that they might collectively say something piercing and eloquent about she who owned them, and gathered them together like a musical quartet on that most rickety of shelves; but it seems to me now that amazingly they did and do speak clearly and penetratingly of she who carried them from one ocean to another, many years ago, and occasionally reached up behind her head with one hand, when she was supine and weary, and hauled down a friend, who spoke to her of character and courage, grace and humor, love and imagination, rain and affection, and so much more. Those are very good books on their own merits, but to me, and I believe to my lovely bride, they will always be great books for other reasons, some of them too subtle for words.