This article probably should have been posted sooner; but the convoluted plotlines of The Lake House make it difficult to recognize what is important when, and this particular event might or might not be important. At one point, Kate sends Alex a book that has not yet been published when Alex receives it.
It occurs upon the death of his father Simon Wyler. The book in question is a retrospective of the apparently famous architect, his life and work, replete with pictures. It helps Alex deal with his estrangement from his father by showing him how dear he was, how much a part of his father's life he had been from his father's perspective. It may be what enables him to move beyond being chief architect and foreman of ticky-tacky development construction projects like Riviera Estates condominiums and finally reconnect with brother Henry to form their long-dreamt architectural firm.
And therein lies the problem. If Alex does not resolve his feelings about his father, he does not reconnect with Henry and start the firm; if he does not start the firm he does not move out of the Lake House; if he does not move out, Kate cannot move in, and they cannot communicate by the mailbox. Yet from the moment of Simon's death two years of history must be created before Kate has the book, and thus there is a timeline in which Alex never received it. If the book is instrumental in enabling Alex to get past his problems with his father and return to the dream, Kate never moves into the lake house.
There are two plausible solutions to this, though.
The first is that Alex manages to work through his feelings anyway; the book was incidental. It was a nice gesture which in the replacement history helped, but it was unnecessary. Alex was on his way to getting over it anyway, and still would have gone to work with Henry about the same time.
The second is that Alex did not in the original history get past the death of his father without that book, but that he moved out of the lake house anyway. His father built that house, but he as a child apparently helped and lived there with his parents for a time. It might be that rather than moving out because he was reconciled with his father and moving forward with his life, he moved because the death of his father made the house the more oppressive, a reminder of a bad relationship that would now never be made good. He missed his chance; his father is gone. The house that reminds him of better times now more and more reminds him of worse.
For whatever reason, it is still plausible that Alex would move out of the house in time for Kate to move into it; thus although the book had the potential to change history significantly, it might not have done so, or it might have done so in ways that did not prevent the vital events from occurring. Either way, we know that having received the book he did not thereafter decide to stay in the lake house. In order for the book to arrive, the original history must have included Kate taking the lake house from Alex on time, and so it must have been thus.
The fact that the book has not yet been published would only matter if Alex showed it to someone else, and there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to have done so (save perhaps to his brother Henry, but he might not have done even that and Henry already knows about the supposed time traveling letters), so the danger is minimal. The book has little impact on anything that matters.
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