He Searched for His Past in Children’s Books. He Found His Wife’s.

In retirement, Steve Mills began collecting secondhand books that he had read as a child. It was an effort to reawaken lost memories.

His search revealed more about his family’s past than he’d thought possible.

He was at home in Hockley, east of London, flipping through titles from a recent book haul from a charity shop. Inside the pages of an early hardcover edition of “The Naughtiest Girl Again,” by the English author Enid Blyton, he found a girl’s handwritten notes from more than 50 years earlier.

It took a few moments for Mr. Mills to grasp who the writer was: his wife, Karen.

At first, Mr. Mills, a 67-year-old former civil servant, simply recognized an address in the town where his wife had grown up, written in a child’s handwriting. He brought the book to Ms. Mills, and said, “Oh look, they used to live in the village you came from,” Mr. Mills recalled.

The address had been her childhood home, though it was spelled wrong. Ms. Mills couldn’t believe it. Surely, she thought, her husband must be playing a trick on her.

“I thought at first that it was him being a silly bugger,” she said. “I actually said to him, ‘Are you trying to misspell our first address?’”