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Creasy Spines

“Every crease is a story.”

Illustration of the kind of find described. We don't reproduce press photographs.
Ticket· 1940s

A 1944 Chicago streetcar ticket in The Razor’s Edge

By the Editors · As reported by Shaw Local, 1 August 2026

FoundSandwich, Illinois, United States

Tucked inside The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

Reunited — it went back to its owner or their family.

Retired newspaper editor Lonny Cain bought a 1944 copy of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge at an antique shop in Sandwich, Illinois. Inside were the owner’s inscription and a Chicago Surface Lines streetcar ticket from July 1944. Cain traced the owner, Phyllis Jeanne Wickenkamp Sesker, who at 19 had been a stenographer at Cook County Hospital commuting from Canaryville and who died in 2024. He sent the book and its ticket to her niece, Kristin Zurline, in Oklahoma City.

This is our summary of a find reported in the press. For the full story, photographs and any updates, read the original report in Shaw Local.

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