Finding the Right Words : Ex-Owner of Fahrenheit 451 Helps Laguna Fire Victims Replace Tomes Treasured for Value or Sentiment

During the 12 years Lorraine Zimmerman owned Fahrenheit 451 Books, the landmark literary oasis on Coast Highway, she was “scared to death of fire because of that name.”

The shop--named after the Ray Bradbury science fiction novel whose title comes from the temperature at which books burn--never had a brush with flame during Zimmerman’s tenure. Nor has the new and improved Fahrenheit 451 built across the highway from the funky old store, which now sells used books.

But since downtown Laguna was spared from fire last week, Zimmerman has a different view of the bookshop’s moniker. “I decided the name is protection,” she said. “When I had the store, it was in an old building that could easily burn in fire at any time.”

Fire and books have been on Zimmerman’s mind a lot since she sat glued to her TV watching coverage of the fire last week.

Which is what brought her back to Laguna this week.

Zimmerman, now a Silverado Canyon resident who has been operating an out-of-print book search service since selling the bookstore in 1988, stopped by a printing shop to have flyers made offering her services.

As she did after the disastrous 1991 Oakland fire, she is deferring her usual finder’s fee to help Laguna’s fire victims replace treasured tomes.

Zimmerman loves books. She owns several thousand. And it pained her to see the hundreds of houses leveled in last week’s fire: Billions of words up in smoke, and for their owners a loss as big as photographs and other family keepsakes.

Michael Orchowski, poking through the charred debris of his home on Skyline Drive last week, lamented the loss of his 2,000 volume library of 19th-Century French Impressionists, modern art and history.

And Charles P. Taylor reportedly lost a $1-million collection of rare magic books and old tricks from famous magicians that were stored in the cellar of his Emerald Bay home.

But no less valuable to their owners are the dog-eared copies of “The Catcher in the Rye” from their college days. Or the childhood collection of Nancy Drew books. Or an autographed John Steinbeck.

Books aren’t just books, Zimmerman says; they’re old friends.

“Books represent your reading over your lifetime,” she said. “They represent a time period in your life, changes in your thinking. And I always thought a house filled with books is the warmest house.”

A frequent visitor to the Bay Area, Zimmerman went to Oakland three weeks after the fire there and posted her flyers at the recovery station, on grocery store bulletin boards, in bookstores and “everywhere people go.”

And it helped, she said.

She tracked down books over a 1 1/2-year period for more than 40 Oakland fire victims.

One older woman who lost a beloved set of Dickens in the blaze could only tell Zimmerman the approximate number of volumes, their approximate size and color. “And I could ask her when she got them,” Zimmerman said. “But all those clues could add up to my identifying what set she was talking about because they’re published in different ways along the years.”

Another client collected the books of William Murray, a San Diego author who writes novels involving horse races. Zimmerman not only found copies of all the burned books but wrote to Murray, who autographed each book before they were shipped north.

Most of her clients were just average people, Zimmerman said. “If they were really book collectors they would have sources already that they’re using all the time. These were just people with a nice library, especially inherited libraries from their parents and grandparents.”

Zimmerman’s MO includes continuous forays to used bookstores, where she consults a master list of books she’s hunting down.

But more effective, she said, “is a magazine that goes to all used-book dealers in America, Canada and Britain. It has lists of the books that people like me want.”

Her “best customer of all time” is a San Francisco man who sent her a handwritten letter describing a story he had read as a boy. He didn’t know the title or the author. It took her 1 1/2 years, Zimmerman said, “but I found it.”

The man then paid her a retainer, saying, “Here’s my list: When you find it, just check it off.” He’s collecting all the books he read as a boy for his son, Zimmerman said.

The best thing for Laguna residents who have lost books in the fire, Zimmerman said, is to just sit down and visualize their bookshelves. “That helps them remember what was there.”

For information, call Zimmerman at (714) 649-2690.

But before they do that, she acknowledged, “they first need to get over the shock.”

Books may seem an insignificant loss when staring at the burned-out shell of what was once your home. But not to book people.

“I teach; I love books,” said Annemarie Moore, a high school German language teacher, as she and her 18-year-old daughter, Alison, stood curbside Tuesday in front of what had been the family’s hillside Laguna Beach home for 27 years.

Did they lose many books?

“Hu-u-u-u-ndreds,” Annemarie Moore said, stretching the word out for emphasis. “You can walk through and find piles of them, starting in my son’s room, in the family room, in my daughter’s room. Even in the entryway, we had a large baker’s rack stuffed with them.”

Added Alison, “We all just really loved them.” A student at Cal State Fullerton, she said she lost many rare books, most of them dealing with American Indians. And, she said, she lost a letter from Ray Bradbury.

“That letter meant a lot to me,” she said. “I’ve never met him, but I’ve read every one of his books, and I’d love to be like him. . . . All my (short) stories and poems are gone.”

They are indeed book people, Alison acknowledged.

“Oh, we are,” she said with a smile. “Now they’re just white ashes. That’s all.”