In a Venetian canal, two upside-down reflections meet—and a flower tossed into the water becomes a greeting. For a man confined to his room, this strange courtship is the brightest thing in his day. The collection opens in late-Victorian Venice, where a poor, paralyzed Englishman watches life across a narrow canal from his window. Angela, first glimpsed as a child in the reflection below her balcony, grows up before his eyes; their shy exchange of flowers gives him a reason to hope, even as he can know her only at a distance. Then a gondolier appears, and the meanings of the flowers—and of the bond they seem to share—may not be what the watcher imagines. What can two people say to each other across the water? With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.
