Ask any author and they'll tell you every book has a story of how it came to be. But at the Greenwich Library, there's one with a tale of how it came to be there.

“A nondescript envelope came in through the mail, and it came in with a very old book and a very lovely note,” explained Greenwich Library's Joe Williams.

It was a version of Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" that had been due back on April 15, 1969.

“Oh my gosh! That book is 19,970 days overdue,” Williams recalled thinking.

That's almost 56 years.

“Quite a journey for this book,” he said.

One that - according to the note that accompanied it - took the book across state lines.

“I was born and raised in Greenwich. My family moved to upstate in New York in 1980. I was recently going through some old boxes and found this book,” the sender wrote.

“It's a good thing we waived late fines a couple years ago,” Williams said with a smile.

Just for fun, News 12 asked what it would’ve been if fines were still around.

“$1,990.70,” Williams stated, adding that any amount would’ve been capped at the cost to replace the book.

The sender also included a check for a new copy of Hemingway's classic.

“It was very touching. It was very awesome that they thought about us so many years after the fact,” Williams said.

If you’re wondering how the book stacks up to the most overdue book ever, that title belongs to one borrowed in 1668 from a library in Cambridge, England, and returned 288 years later, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

“This is definitely in the Greenwich Book of World Records,” Williams said.

He told News 12 he didn't know the longest overdue book before this one, but staff couldn't remember any book coming back decades late.

Because of the age of the returned version, it won't be back on the fiction shelves. Instead, it’s headed to the library's historic archives.

“It's a nice piece of memorabilia for us to have just to think about our patrons and how they think of us,” Williams said.