Recently, a book so long overdue that when it was last checked out World War II was still in progress, was sent to a library in western Washington state.
Long after its March 1942 due date, Brad Bitar returned a copy of “The Bounty Trilogy” by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall to the Aberdeen Timberland Library.
The book had been resting in Bitar’s garage for a few years until he decided to give it back to its proper owner, the Olympia resident told news network CNN.
He added that although he did not know the individual who had borrowed the book 81 years earlier, they might have done so while visiting his family’s long ago closed store.
The book, which was published in 1932, was among the antiques left behind by the business, according to Bitar, who collects historical objects.
“My assumption was that the library was probably not going to be interested in taking it back,” said Bitar.
That turned out not to be true.
“The person that accepted the book I think was really stunned and kind of couldn’t believe it,” said the social media specialist for the Timberland Regional Library system., Anna Lisa Rasmussen.
The surprising return was announced on social media with a caption explaining “If overdue fines had accrued at the rate of $.02/day, barring holidays and Sundays as it outlines on the card, the patron would owe about $484.80.”
In order to remove financial hurdles that keep people from attending, Rasmussen stated that the library stopped charging late fees in 2020, so it wouldn’t apply to this book or any other.
Her post about the book “has stirred up people saying, ‘I actually read that book recently, I really liked it,’ or, ‘I read that when I was a teenager”.
According to its Amazon description, “The Bounty Trilogy” describes the events leading up to the mutiny on the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty.
Bitar revealed to CNN that he looked up the value of his trilogy copy online and found that it was worth at least $1,200 now.
Rasmussen claims that the recently returned antique will “most likely” not be put back into circulation due to it’s age.
