Jennifer Egan’s essay, “Reading Lucy” from the collection Brooklyn Was Mine conveys Egan’s relationship to Lucy Kolkin and how it develops throughout letters written by Lucy to her husband. At the begging of the essay Egan talks about two month friendship she had with Lucy Kolkin until Lucy decided to move to California. Later on in the essay we understand that by that she meant that she spent two months reading Lucys letters to her husband that joined the navy on 1944. This relationship developed because Egan was doing research on a novel  she was writing about which was about a woman who worked in Navy Yard during World War II and she came up with Lucy who also worked at the navy yard for almost two years. To help her research  she decided to read the lecture notes lucy had when she took shipfitting school. While she examine the notes she noticed lucy did to-do lists just the way she did so it intrigued her to know more about this woman. Therefore, she decided to go to BHS to read the letters BHS had archived from her when she used to write to her husband. Jennifer Egan spend 2 months reading this letters and she got so into lucys life that she felt she was there a with lucy back in 1944.  Even if she didn’t get the chance to meet Lucy it was like if she already knew her by the emotion lucy put in those letters to her husband. At the beginning when she said she got to know lucy until she moved to California she meant that that was the last time she got to read lucys letters because lucy went to live to California to be with her husband, so obviously the letters stop at that point. Egan learned Lucy did have kids and grandchildren but that sadly she died. After that Egan decided to read some letters that Alfred Kolkin send to Lucy and she was happy and satisfied knowing that Alfred had the same amazing personality Lucy had.