Millbank by Mary J. Holmes is the book I've been rereading during my father's health scare. If you don't know what Millbank is and what it means to me, you might like to read the essay I wrote about it. (The piece also appears in my reader's memoir The Vagabond's Bookshelf.) Suffice it to say that this nineteenth-century American novel was and is trash, but I have been rereading it all my life, and it gives me a particular kind of comfort.

The novel has a ridiculous plot, risible descriptions, and terrible prose . . . for instance, this line, meant to describe an excited 14-year-old boy:

"With a low, suppressed scream, Roger bounded to Hester's side."

It's a truly awful book, but I love it dearly and am probably the novel's only living fan. I found it in my grandfather's farmhouse when I was a child, and I've been rereading it ever since. My affection for Millbank is a regular family joke. So when my dad was in the ICU and I pulled it out to show him what I was carrying around with me, he rolled his eyes and shook his head and made the same face he always makes every time he sees me clutching that volume again. Personally, I think Millbank was part of his cure.