Below is the complete list of Richard Paul Evans’ Locket Trilogy books in order. For this series, the chronological reading order is the same as the order of publication.
Publication Order of Locket Trilogy Books
About Locket Trilogy
Richard Paul Evans’s Locket Trilogy is a three-novel sequence about love, missed opportunities, forgiveness, and the choices that determine whether a relationship survives hardship. The series begins with the contemporary story of Michael Keddington and Faye Murrow, moves into a largely independent historical narrative in The Looking Glass, and then returns to Michael and Faye in The Carousel. The books are linked more strongly by themes, symbols, and Evans’s interest in second chances than by one uninterrupted plot.
The Locket introduces Michael after the death of his mother leaves him grieving, financially strained, and uncertain about his future. He takes a job at the Arcadia nursing home, where he forms an important friendship with Esther Huish, an elderly resident who has spent much of her life mourning a love she allowed to slip away. Esther’s memories become more than an old woman’s romantic history. They force Michael to consider how fear, pride, and hesitation can shape an entire lifetime.
Michael’s own relationship with Faye becomes increasingly difficult as circumstances pull them apart. At the same time, he is falsely accused of abusing a resident at Arcadia, threatening both his livelihood and his reputation. Esther’s experience and the locket she gives him help turn the story toward forgiveness and the possibility of repairing what appears lost. The object becomes a reminder that regret can either imprison someone in the past or teach them to act differently when another chance appears.
The Looking Glass changes characters, period, and setting. It follows Hunter Bell, a minister devastated by the death of his wife in childbirth. Leaving his young daughter behind, Hunter travels into Utah’s nineteenth-century gold-mining country and drifts toward gambling while struggling with grief and spiritual despair. During a brutal winter, an unexpected encounter forces him to confront suffering beyond his own.
Unlike the first and third novels, The Looking Glass does not continue Michael and Faye’s relationship. Its place within the trilogy is primarily thematic. Hunter’s journey reflects the same concerns with loss, faith, self-examination, and the danger of allowing pain to determine the rest of one’s life. The looking glass itself reinforces the trilogy’s recurring emphasis on seeing one’s choices clearly rather than blaming circumstance for everything that has gone wrong.
The Carousel returns to Michael and Faye after the reconciliation achieved in The Locket. Their love has survived one crisis, but adult responsibilities prove that reconciliation is not the same as permanent security. Michael is attending college and working at Arcadia, while Faye prepares for medical school. They marry, but pressures involving education, money, family expectations, work, and physical separation test the assumptions they have made about their future together.
That return gives the trilogy a circular quality. Michael has already learned from Esther what can happen when pride and silence are allowed to separate people, yet knowing a lesson does not guarantee that he will apply it perfectly when his own marriage becomes painful. The Carousel is therefore less about whether Michael and Faye love one another than whether love can mature enough to survive disappointment, sacrifice, and plans that do not unfold as expected.
The trilogy’s three central objects—the locket, the looking glass, and the carousel—each carry symbolic weight, connecting memory, self-knowledge, and the repeated cycles of human relationships. While The Looking Glass can stand independently, the first and third novels form the clearest continuous narrative. Taken together, the trilogy presents love not as protection from loss or failure, but as something sustained through honesty, forgiveness, and the willingness to choose another person again after circumstances make that choice difficult.