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A detail from "The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen" by English society artist Ozias Humphry. The portrait is believed to be the only known painting of Jane Austen.Reuters

Is there a book you return to again and again, a work that would make life on a desert island bearable? Each weekend, until Labour Day, Globe writers will share their go-to tomes – be it novel, poetry collection, cookbook – and why the world is just a little better for them.

At 26, I was living in an unfamiliar city and mourning the end of a relationship. Actually, it's more accurate to say I was still trying to accept the breakup, still struggling to realize that a man I'd expected to be with for the rest of my life was no longer a part of it.

Meanwhile, I was forging ahead with a career in journalism, editing on the night desk at the Daily Press in Timmins, Ont. I enjoyed the work and was excited about what lay ahead, but I was also lonely. Timmins was an eight-hour drive from my friends and family in Southern Ontario and I didn't know anyone other than my colleagues.

That's the backdrop against which I read Persuasion for the first time. Like all Jane Austen, the book is a beautifully written comedy of manners, a biting social commentary featuring a variety of characters with too-familiar foibles – a Nora Ephron movie set 200 years ago. And at its heart is a love story.

The narrative opens eight years after a pivotal moment in its heroine's life. Anne Elliot, then just 19, had fallen in love with naval officer Frederick Wentworth. He returned her affections and proposed. As Austen writes, "A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one. – Troubles soon arose." Anne's family disapproved of the match. They persuaded her that a marriage would end in unhappiness for everyone involved, and she broke off the engagement.

The novel begins, then, with a 27-year-old Anne, resigned to a life of spinsterhood. Both she and Wentworth consider their past behind them, but when they are thrown into the same circle once more, their romance rekindles. There are misunderstandings and frustrations as other suitors enter the mix, but the couple come to realize their feelings have stood the test of time. Reading it late at night in my Timmins apartment, the stress of barely made deadlines floated away as I immersed myself in the story. The fantasy of one day returning to my own lost love was irresistible. If Anne and Wentworth could find their way back to each other years later, my breakup might not be the end of the road. (It was.)

Persuasion earned a spot among my "comfort books" – those I return to again and again like old friends. And although I still feel a thrill when the couple finally work things out, the love story isn't the only reason I come back to the book so often. It's the promise of its broader theme: Second chances sometimes come around in life, and if we are brave enough to act, a better outcome is possible.

One key scene takes place toward the end of the book, when the central characters attend an evening concert. Anne comes face to face with Wentworth for the first time in months, during which several changes have occurred. Knowing Wentworth is uncertain about her feelings, Anne seeks him out. As he enters the concert hall, she walks over to him – despite the fact that her judgmental family is nearby. During the conversation, Wentworth obliquely indicates the constancy of his own affections but is clearly jealous of a perceived rival.

Anne isn't interested in her other suitor, but within the social confines of the early 19th century, it's hard to get Wentworth on his own. It takes cunning – and causes offence to others in her life – for Anne to communicate her love to the Captain in a way that can't be misinterpreted.

When the couple finally understand each other, it's sweeter for the fact that they each had to work for it. Anne has learned to trust her instincts and take personal risks. For his part, Wentworth had to examine his feelings closely. He realizes his feigned indifference was masking wounded pride. Beneath all that, his feelings haven't changed in eight years.

In my own life, trusting my gut enough to act isn't always easy. The second-guessing in the back of my head can get noisy. But small-scale victories add up: I went on a blind date; I contradicted my boss in a meeting; I asked a person who really mattered to me to give me some space. In many cases, my instincts have been proved correct (although that blind date was a total disaster).

Jane Austen's works are about these kinds of personal decisions. There's a moment in Persuasion in which Anne thinks: No matter how my current situation works out, I have made my decision: It's Wentworth or no one. She decides to plot her own course in life, wherever it takes her – and life as an unmarried woman in 1815 was no joke. That's the kind of heroism I can get behind.

It's more than a decade since I first found solace in the pages of Persuasion. My life has unfolded differently from how I once imagined it, but I'm glad about that. I take comfort in knowing my own story isn't finished yet – who knows what second chances lie around the corner?

Jeff Lemire says he worked on his new graphic novel Roughneck at the same time as the Gord Downie project, Secret Path. The illustrator says “Roughneck” addresses themes of violence and addiction in indigenous communities.

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