SASKATOON — When Shauna Raycraft set out seven years ago to rescue over 300,000 books from being burned by her neighbour, she had no idea things eventually would come full circle.

Raycraft offered to take on the books after her neighbour's collector husband died. She intended to sort through the stack and donating many of them — no small task when you're talking about 30 tons of books.

Despite a push last year to get help sorting through the hundreds of boxes she had trucked to her property near Pike Lake, Sask., to house the collection, she was only able to sort through one-third of the books.

Now the end has come. If Raycraft doesn't get help sorting through the 200,000 remaining titles by the end of the month, she is calling in the fire department and burning the rest.

"Maybe they are destined to be burned. The irony of it is not lost on me," Raycraft said. "It's been seven years and about $15,000 into it. I'm done."

Raycraft is still hoping to get as much as possible into the hands of collectors or charitable organizations in Africa and northern Saskatchewan before the burning.

"I really need people to step up and give me a hand to get these books to people who need them," she said. "My husband just wants to burn the building down right now, he just wants it done with. It's a shame we couldn't do more with it, but I'm only one person."

Finally watching the inferno will feel like "60 tons of weight lifted off my shoulders," she said.

The collection is tinged with regret for Raycraft. She wonders if she should have ever taken the books on at all.

"It's been seven years of my life. It's been all of my youngest daughter's life, most of my oldest daughter's life."

There is regret, and yet something about the books draws her in — the nostalgia, the personal tidbits she finds hidden in the pages.

"I like looking at the years of books," she said. "I like looking at which school the books came from, or seeing the little shopping lists and notes that fall out of them."

Though she never knew him in life, Raycraft got to know her neighbour by sorting through his collection over the years, tracking its progress from collection to compulsion.

"You can see when he started it was very much an organized, thought-out thing. He had shelves, everything was organized. The next level of collection was books that he had bought in boxes and didn't have time to shelve or organize. And the third level of collection was just free for all. It was loosely stacked books everywhere."

Raycraft has just weeks left to find the most suitable titles in her enormous collection and donate them to organizations that promote literacy. She already has one person volunteering to truck books up to northern Saskatchewan, where literacy rates lag behind the rest of the province.

She hopes to get as many people as possible to volunteer to sort during July 1 to July 7, after which the remaining books will be burned.

To get in touch with Raycraft and volunteer, search out the Raycraft Book Collection on Facebook.

rmaclean@thestarphoenix.com

Twitter.com/rory_borealis