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- [00:00]
A
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B
Well, hello bookcasers. Good to have you with us. I'm Charlie Gibson.
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C
And I am Kate Gibson. And we are always glad to have your ears.
- [00:45]
B
Yep. We want to welcome all you wild child people because we have a book today called Children of the Wild. Clever, huh? Anyway, thank you, Kate.
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C
I know you're good. That was a really good segue. That was really good. You know, when I worked at the Food Network, my job was to write copies. Be like that. And I remember once I had to write copy for a chef and. And it was Moroccan food. And I wrote this food is more rocking than your average Saturday night food.
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B
That's actually so bad that it's not bad. Yeah, good.
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D
That was a good segue.
- [01:17]
C
Wild child.
- [01:18]
B
Well, the children. The Children of the Wild is really lame. I know I should have pre thought something to say. But anyway, Children of the Wild is the name of the book today. The author is Kevin Powers. And I think this book requires some explanation and I found it really, really excellent, but it's different. I want to set the scene. There are three principal characters and Kate, you should talk a little bit about their relationship. One is Roy, one is Ennis, two males and Samantha Sam, who is a woman. And there is sort of a love triangle among the three. Once you establish the characters, the book sort of moves off in a different direction, which I think is the principal part. And what makes the book so good?
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C
Yes, I think it's the heart and the meat of the novel.
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D
You're right.
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C
There's a love triangle that's set up in the beginning between Roy and Innes and Samantha. And then, you know, Roy and Innys, despite being in this love triangle, strike up an unlikely friendship. And I think that the book is largely about their friendship and their love for one another. Not even despite this love triangle. Maybe also because of this love triangle. This book is beautifully written, I must say. I just want to say that as well, this book is beautifully written.
- [02:27]
B
Well, the setting, the setting is western Virginia.
- [02:30]
E
Yeah.
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B
In the. What they call the Appalachian Mountains. That's having spent some time in that area, they don't call it the Appalachians, they call it the Appalachian Mountains.
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C
But anyway, around World War I.
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B
Around World War I. And Ennis. And you have to buy Ennis. You have to accept that Ennis is what he is. He's a feral child. He lives up in the mountains outside the area where Sam and Roy live. And he hasn't had really any human contact to speak of a little bit. But he is, as I say, a feral child. The wild man, as Kevin Powers refers to him. And he doesn't know when he was born. He doesn't know who his parents are. He doesn't know his name exactly until they give him a name, Ennis. And you have to accept the fact that he comes down and he has the whole modern world, modern and early 20th century. The whole modern world is a mystery to him. And he has to establish relationships with. With Sam and with Roy. So Ennis is a really interesting character and he goes through a lot of changes. But the second and the third parts of the book really are about war. And that's when the book, I think, takes off. When they go off to World War I together.
- [03:41]
C
Yeah. And it's all about the way war tears you apart and the way you try to put yourself back together. And it's a beautiful book and they're amazing charact. And we were really excited to talk to Kevin about the book.
- [03:54]
B
Well, you know, it's interesting, you so often call me and say, this book is going to have to stick the landing. And this book really does. It really does stick the landing, I think.
- [04:05]
C
And it has the reader, I think, ask some important questions about, you know, well, war.
- [04:11]
B
The one part of this book that didn't surprise me, you'll hear me say it in our conversation, is right at the end when they have that little paragraph about the author. And it says, kevin Powers served in Iraq. And the entire time I was reading this, I thought, this guy understands war. And even though he's writing about World War I, he gets it. And indeed, so we talk to him a lot about it. Anyway, here's our interview. The book is Children of the Wild. The author is Kevin Powers, and we both recommend it strongly. Kevin Powers, it's good to have you with us. Thank you for joining us. In the bookcase, the book is, as we've mentioned, Children of the Wild. There's a lot going on in this book and there are specific parts of it that I think we'll talk about. But give me Overall what your 30, 45 second elevator pitch to a potential publisher would be sure it's about three
- [05:05]
F
young people who are bonded by the struggles that they go through in the early 20th century. Two young men who fight in the First World War, and a young woman who is left behind to deal with the Spanish flu coming through the remote Southwest Virginia valley that they're from. And the book is really about how the hardship kind of brings them closer together and allows them to get through those difficulties.
- [05:31]
D
Feels like there's almost three distinct acts to the book. The first act being a love triangle, the second being the war, and the third being beautifully written passages about, I feel like, ptsd. Were you aware of sort of wanting to separate those three different settings for
- [05:48]
F
your readers in the original conception? I wouldn't say I had it broken down in that way, but as the story developed, it felt like there were these kind of discrete units that I felt like, married together, hopefully. Hopefully pretty well in an organic way.
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D
But that brings me to my next question, which is, what was the hook that sunk you into the chair? Was it at the character of Innes? Was it the relationship between two men going to war together? What was the hook for you?
- [06:14]
F
Yeah, I think it was. You know, I've always been curious about the way that our society seems to grant permission to men to have really close, intimate friendships. Only in situations where they're under extreme duress or, you know, very often that's the case. And, you know, I actually think that's. That's pretty unfortunate. So I was trying to tell a story where two guys could become as close as family, closer than family, maybe even. And what brings them together is the experience of the war. But I think ultimately the conclusion that Roy in particular reaches is that it wasn't necessary to have that kind of relationship. You know, it transcends that. It transcends the place and the circumstances where the bond was forged. And so I just wanted to kind of depict a real friendship that was eventually unselfconscious in a way that I don't see very often in. In, you know, in books and TV shows. I just wanted to see it on the page and see if I could make it feel authentic.
- [07:20]
B
There are many surprises, or were, to me, at least in the book. The one that wasn't a surprise is the last sentence of the book about the author. And it says, kevin now lives in Florida with his family. He is a veteran of the war in Iraq. And Kate characterized it as being really, I thought, and I agree, the last third being basically about what effect war have on people. And though it wasn't an expression used in World War I about PTSD. And I thought this is something you had to have pretty good personal experiences with to have written with this much sensitivity about it.
- [08:00]
F
Well, I appreciate that very much. I certainly had a frame of reference. I won't pretend like the experiences that I went through were anywhere close to the magnitude of what soldiers went through in the First World War, but it created the kind of urgency of the question for me. My own experience, for sure. And one of the things that I think about a lot when I'm writing characters, and, you know, it's sort of a thread through all of my books, is that there are characters who have a relationship to conflict is I feel an obligation to, to tell the truth as I understand it and, you know, to not shy away from how difficult it is to not be, you know, voyeuristic about it or, you know, to exaggerate it, but also not to give the reader an out from experiencing how hard it actually is for these people, you know, and creating characters, I think, does allow me to interrogate my own experience as well. There's something about the distance of putting it in fiction and in the case of this book, having it removed by, you know, a hundred plus years, that I think gives me an opportunity to look at my own experience through a different lens, which is maybe more productive than when I'm sort of just wrestling with these things on my own.
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D
What is the art of battle writing for you?
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F
I want the reader to feel like they're, they're looking at the scene through this one or two, whatever perspective I'm occupying through that character's eyes and hopefully feeling the sensations of an individual human being and trying to imagine themselves into that. I mean, that's the, you know, when I first, when I first came back from Iraq, I mean, one of the, one of the things people would often say is I, I can't imagine it. And in some ways, I took that as a challenge because I think people can, you know, I, I, I think people, they want to, they want to understand for me that when somebody comes up and says, I can't imagine it, that's actually kind of an act of generosity because I think they're really saying that they, that they want to, they want to, they want to have this moment of empathy and understanding. And so I feel like my job is to, to get the reader as close as I possibly can to feeling what it actually feels like.
- [10:06]
B
You mentioned that it's the relationship between two men who come from this area that you just described. One of them Is. And you used the word, he's the wild man of the mountains. We're talking about Ennis, of course. And as I read the book, I thought, so much of this depends on me, the reader, being able to buy Ennis, who doesn't know his birthday, doesn't know his name. He literally is a wild man, a feral child, in effect. And you have to buy his transition to normalcy. But I come back to that issue of how you envisioned Ennis, how you wrote Ennis, and how you got the reader to accept the fact that there are some wild swings in Ennis's life.
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D
And what purpose Ennis, being from the wild, what freedom does that allow you as an author, as you're exploring the character?
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G
Sure.
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F
Well, I mean, he's a blank slate. So when he's looking at the social circumstances of Roy and Samantha and the kind of world that he enters into when he's going into the war in the army, I get to have the reader look through his eyes and have them learn as he's learning, you know? So it's introducing the reader in all these different circumstances and letting them come to understand what it's like or what the situation is kind of about right alongside Ennis as he's making these discoveries. But, you know, to be honest, Charlie, it was a. It was a real challenge. And, you know, I hope I arrived at walking that. Walking that tightrope, but I was really conscious of what kinds of things would Ennis know? What would he not. What would surprise him? What would his perspective on, you know, various things be? Just in the matter of having to remind myself that he's gonna. He's not gonna have any idea what fork you ought to use at dinner. You know, that. Just those sorts of details I had to be conscious of at every moment. So it was really, you know, as I. As I often find in my writing, it's just trying something and seeing if it works, and if not, trying it again.
- [12:16]
D
But it's a tough balance, isn't it? Because I think you just made the point very well that what it allows you is for Innis to be both observer and participant. But you could easily have too much
- [12:25]
C
of either one and take that credibility
- [12:29]
D
and throw it away, it seems to me. Was that a tough tightrope to walk?
- [12:33]
F
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. And, you know, the biggest thing is, not only do you want the reader to believe him, I mean, you have to care. You have to care what happens to him. You have to be invested in his perspective on things. So it really is Just kind of trying to fine tune different scenes. Maybe taking in a scene or a gesture, taking one out or putting one in, or having him react in a way that he wouldn't have before. Even allowing the kind of his entry into the world to be funny in certain aspects. It's anything to kind of get the reader to buy into the totality of the experience of reading him as a character in the novel.
- [13:16]
B
I said earlier that the one sentence in the book that didn't surprise me came at the end of a description about the authority, which was that he had served in Iraq, he'd served in war. Did you come home with a different feeling about war than you had when you went to Iraq? And how is it reflected in the book?
- [13:37]
F
Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. I was. I wouldn't say I was completely naive. I was mostly naive. I think I understood that I was going into something, you know, that was going to be momentous in my life, for better or worse, and that it was incredibly dangerous. And I understood that. But seeing the sort of scope and scale of it, the effect that our presence had on, you know, this country with thousands and thousands of years of history, the people who, you know, not only didn't choose to be involved, but who would not have chosen to be involved, are just trying to live their own lives. It gave me a sense of just how grave a decision it is to enter into a work. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm a pacifist now in a way that I. That I wasn't when I was 20. And you know, in the book, Roy starts out enthusiastic in a way that young men often are about going to war. And I just sort of find it bizarre. And, you know, when you talked about the setting and sort of what that allowed me to do toward the end, I am interested in the sort of cyclical nature of it, how every generation there seems to be this draw that young men find themselves pulled toward conflict. And somehow every generation there seems to be this other group of men who create the opportunity for them to go to war. And that seems to be consistent throughout history. So absolutely that. That sort of thinking that, that I had about my life and you know, my father and my uncle were in the military. My grandfather's in the Second World War. So even in my own family, that kind of dynamic of this impulse when you're young to want to. Want to enter into this, it's both fascinating and terrifying to me. And I wanted to depict that same sort of journey in the book.
- [15:30]
B
I wondered if you came back seriously doubting any kind of purpose in war and whether you came back with real empathy about people who can never get over the effects of the war in which they've participated. And I think both Roy and Ennis are in that category.
- [15:49]
F
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. For the, you know, the second part, the empathy for, you know, people who can't find their way out is, you know, something that I've encountered with people that I've known. You know, I used to volunteer with the Veterans Administration and I led this kind of poetry workshop and a lot of participants were Vietnam vets and they were still, they were still there in their minds in a lot of ways. So, yeah, absolutely. That's something that I think about a lot and have thought about a lot. I mean, one of the ways that I would probably describe it is you. You get a lifetime's worth of experience condensed down into this very short period of time. So you get a lifetime's worth of fear, you get a lifetime's worth of anger, you get a lifetime's worth of sadness, you know, and it's concentrated down into this, I mean, almost kind of like diamond compression of emotional experience. And when you're young, it, it, the potential for it to kind of overload the system is, is, is very real. And I think for a lot of people it does. And so for me, there was a, you know, a lot of time after I got back that was sort of unpacking that and trying to kind of like distribute those emotions more evenly or in a kind of, you know, in a way that could be comprehended. I'm very fortunate that writing is a, is a, you know, an outlet for me. And it gives me a sort of, whether it's the illusion of control or actual control, you know, I don't know. But it does let me sort of shape my understanding of the experiences that I've had. And, you know, it, when somebody reads what I've written and they get something out of it and they feel like they understand some aspect of it, you know, you feel sort of useful and that. And that matters to me. And so I wouldn't say it. I mean, maybe it does age you prematurely. I understood a lot about life that I think I wasn't equipped to understand the year before I went over there. Um, you know, and there are, there are benefits to that. I mean, I think I, I'm even, even then I was able to, to be grateful for things in a way that, you know, maybe not every 23 year old is, you know, there's a kind of Appreciation for the opportunities that you have, the people in your life. It's really a matter of finding that perspective. And it can take, you know, it can take some time, and it takes some practice to. To sort of. To see the. The silver linings, to see the light that's sort of creeping through the dark.
- [18:20]
D
As somebody who has a unique perspective as both a writer and as a. As a participant in the system, are we getting better at recognizing PTSD and dealing with it as a society? That's an unfair question, because I know
- [18:33]
E
you're not a sociologist or whatever, but
- [18:35]
D
I'm throwing it at you anyway.
- [18:37]
F
I mean, anecdotally, I would say my experience is that, yes, absolutely, you know, the culture of the military is one that probably necessarily, to function, has to keep that at arm's length, you know, But I think in terms of the people who are. Who are treating returning veterans and the awareness of the fact that that treatment may be necessary at all is something that I think has. Has. Has changed for the better in a. In a dramatic fashion in the last, you know, 20 years or so, so. Sure, absolutely.
- [19:10]
B
Kevin Powers, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. A really interesting study of a lot of things. Children of the Wild is the book. Ennis, Roy and Samantha, really interesting characters around whom this book revolves. Thanks ever so much. Appreciate it.
- [19:26]
F
Thank you.
- [19:26]
D
Thank you.
- [19:27]
F
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
- [19:33]
B
Children of the Wild, Kevin Powers. You know, I thought it was interesting that you thought the last third of the book was about the effects of war on Roy and Annis, and you said that it's what we would now call ptsd, which didn't, you know, there was no such diagnosis of that at that time. But now I think it's. You certainly see the effect and. And I think it certainly reflects what Kevin talked about with us, which is that he came back so much a changed individual and came back as a pacifist and how he knew what he was getting into when he went there, but he still couldn't imagine how serving in Iraq has affected him.
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C
Yeah, war has been written about quite a bit, hasn't it? And so I think in some ways, war is. When we talked about Ann Patchett, war is a little bit like love. It's hard to write about because it's been done so much. And so when it is done well, it is a journey for the reader that is both difficult and rewarding.
- [20:26]
B
Anyway, we thank Kevin Powers. When we come back, we're going to have some rapid fire just a little bit for Kevin Powers. And then we have a bookstore this week it's up in Vermont. And we'll talk to Lisa Sullivan, the owner of the store, about that. When we come.
- [20:46]
H
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- [21:03]
I
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- [22:04]
G
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- [22:38]
B
Is war better depicted in fiction or nonfiction?
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F
I think both are essential. One of the things that fiction can do that nonfiction can't is it can allow you to see the experience through the through the eyes of a character. You know, fiction gives you the possibility of experiencing the interior life of a character in a way that nonfiction doesn't. So it's really not so Much is one better? It's just that they do different things in different ways.
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B
Joseph Heller with Catch 22 or Tim O' Brien with the Things They Carried. Which one for me?
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F
Tim o'. Brien.
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D
Yeah, I love him. What do novels about war do you think most often get wrong?
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F
I think the depiction of violence. I think people, either they don't have a personal frame of reference or they don't want to put the reader in a position that's too uncomfortable, so they shy away from showing how terrible it actually is or it's seen as something exciting or dramatic, which I suppose in a way it is. But for me that shouldn't be the emphasis.
- [23:48]
B
And best war movie, probably.
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F
It's very difficult to watch, but probably come and see. And that's. Yeah. And an old European, I think. I don't know if it's Soviet or Ukrainian, but it's really tough. But it gets as close to showing the reality of the experience as anything I've ever seen.
- [24:08]
D
Favorite book you've read to your kids?
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F
We started the Hobbit, which we're enjoying, so we're sort of trading off reading and talking about it. But that was a favorite of mine. So getting to share that experience has been really, really exciting. It's been awesome.
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B
Do you have a favorite book of all time?
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F
It changes, but if I had to pick one right now, it would be a book called Barabbas by Parlogerfist, a Swedish writer. He wrote it in the 1950s, won the Nobel Prize, and it's about the character Barabbas from the Bible. They made a movie about it, too. But it's just an extraordinary book about doubt and faith. And I just was overwhelmed by the clarity of the writing, the sort of precision of the emotional expression. It's just amazing.
- [24:59]
D
What's your writing routine like? Do you do it every day?
- [25:03]
F
I do. I treat it as much like a job as I possibly can, so usually take my kids to school, drop them off. I'm at the desk by 8:39, and if I can get four hours of creative output, I feel like that's a pretty good day. But I try to be sitting there in the morning, rain or shine.
- [25:22]
B
Do you have a hobby?
- [25:24]
F
I do. I'm restoring an old Jeep right now, which is a. It's a. It's a different. It flexes different intellectual muscles. You know, I'm. I'm not necessarily mechanically inclined, but learning that has been really fun and exciting. And then I, you know, I live by the beach, so I do like. Like the Water and being on the water and that sort of thing.
- [25:47]
B
What are you going to do with the Jeep when you finish?
- [25:49]
F
You're assuming I'm actually going to finish, which I appreciate.
- [25:53]
D
Isn't that funny? That's the first thought that popped into my father's head. The first thought that popped into my head is, you have a nice white.
- [26:00]
F
Well, I do that. That is a fact.
- [26:03]
B
I can't deny that.
- [26:05]
C
That is not a.
- [26:06]
D
That is not a small hobby that doesn't take up a lot of space. It's not stamp collecting.
- [26:11]
F
Well, yeah, People ask, people sometimes ask me how much it's cost me. And I'll say, I'll let you know if it ever stops costing me, you know.
- [26:21]
D
Best piece of advice you've ever received about writing and who gave it to you?
- [26:25]
F
Was actually the husband of a classmate when I was in graduate school at the University of Texas. And I don't remember how it came up, but he said, don't worry about whether or not you're a good writer. Worry about whether or not you're producing good writing. And I think about that a lot. What matters is what's on the page. I don't have to worry about, you know, the kind of identity as a writer and all that stuff. All that stuff is secondary and unproductive.
- [26:56]
B
Our bookstore this week is Bartleby Books in Wilmington, Vermont. Lisa Sullivan is the owner. You know, we've talked so much, Kate, about the fact that bookstore owners like to think that they are such an integral part of the community. But as you'll hear from Lisa, when the store ran into trouble in the year 2011, the community became a much part of the bookstore. And it's.
- [27:20]
C
I love those stories.
- [27:22]
B
Yeah. It shows that the bookstore is important to the community and the community is important to the bookstore. Our conversation with Lisa Sullivan of Bartleby Books. Lisa Sullivan of Bartleby's Books. It's good to have you with us. I'm interested in your location. You're in Vermont. You're right between two big tourist spots. Who are your customers and do they come mostly in the winter at ski season or in the summer when things are pretty in Vermont's lakes?
- [27:55]
E
We have a mix of what we would say sort of three groups. We have people who live here all the time. So our locals, we have a big second homeowner population here. And so we have those at various times of year. And then we have people who are just coming on vacation or going through traffic as well. Route 9 is a kind of a major Corridor in Southern Vermont.
- [28:13]
C
Talk to me about how you were crazy enough, smart enough, lucky enough, unlucky enough. Pick your adjective. To end up in the independent bookstore
- [28:22]
E
business, it's sort of a roundabout way. I was an English major in college, and then I went and worked in the tech industry for a startup and worked crazy hours and decided to move to Vermont at a pretty young age. So I was in my late 20s. My husband and I moved here and the local bookstore, you know, wasn't thriving, and I became partners with the owner, basically. And so that's how I started because I loved books and I wanted to be around books. And I also really wanted to be part of the community. And it seemed I had been working at home and I, you know, I wanted a way to connect. And I thought being in a bookstore would be a great way to do that.
- [28:55]
C
I mean, you can't just walk into somebody's store and go, so this isn't thriving. Can I have some of it?
- [29:01]
E
No, no. I was a good customer. So I was a good. I started there, I was a good customer and I was friendly with the owner and we would get to. Into long chats and became friendly and talked about the business and kind of how she might want to get out of it. And then it. Eventually, you know, we became partners, and then some years later, she moved on.
- [29:19]
B
But if it wasn't thriving, what did you say? Did you say, I'll take you out of your misery? Or did you say to yourself, I can do this and make it better?
- [29:29]
E
This is 22 years ago, so, you know, a little bit of different time. But Amazon was really kind of on the, you know, was. Was on the rise and becoming big. And I thought that I could help mostly from a sort of business management standpoint. And, you know, it needed an infusion of cash quite honestly as well. Independent bookstores often need more money. And so I came in with a little bit of money to help, to help the inventory. And the other thing, we like, we didn't have a. We didn't have a point of sale system. We didn't have an inventory that was, you know, computerized. So I brought some of my. I was a marketing person, but I brought my sort of more tech background and I guess to sort of modernize a little bit.
- [30:04]
B
And then came 2011, and your store got destroyed by Tropical Storm Irene. Tell me about that.
- [30:12]
E
So two things happened that year. So it's a long story, but I'll make it short. We had opened. We had bought a second store in Brattleboro which is about a half hour away. So we had two stores running, and that store was called the Bookseller. It had a long, long history in Brattleboro. And In April of 2011, there was devastating fire to the whole block, and we lost that store. And then four months later, Tropical Storm Irene came and wiped out the. Our downtown here in Wilmington. And so two for two.
- [30:39]
C
Two for two.
- [30:40]
E
Two for two, yeah. Wow. Not a great year. Not a great year. But we owned this building in Wilmington, and this is where my husband and I and our family lives. And because we owned the building, we could get to work really fast. So we got to work basically, and we knew that we had to get the store cleaned out. We needed to start working. And we felt it was really important to show the other people in town and the other businesses that we could save it and that we could turn things around because everyone was in shock. So my husband's a builder and he knew what to do. And we just got going.
- [31:13]
C
I was trying to picture the smell and the feel and what the cleanup must have been like.
- [31:18]
E
Ugh, the cleanup. Yeah, the cleanup was pretty, pretty awful. But we had a lot of help once we were able to get back into the downtown. We had to get cleared by the National Guard to, you know, to be able to know that it was safe to be on the roads and in the buildings. Our community was amazing. They really were incredible. And we just put out a call for help and people showed up and they had wheelbarrows and, you know, gloves and helped us out.
- [31:43]
B
Well, that's what we've heard from bookstore owners again and again, that we are the community and the community are us, if you pardon my using the wrong verb. But that the communities respond when bookstores are in trouble. So what did they do?
- [32:00]
E
I mean, they did everything for us. You know, they. They helped us with cleanup, they supported us while we were closed. They bought books off of our website because we were closed for about three months. We opened the day after Thanksgiving, so Black Friday, we said, we need to get back open. We were literally screwing in shelves, you know, up until the day before Thanksgiving. And there was a line out the door when, you know, at opening time, which is, you know, rare. Double that line down the street. And they so just incredibly supportive and probably had our busiest days ever, just when we reopened then because there was just so much support.
- [32:34]
C
I'm also interested in your curation philosophy for. I mean, because if you're dealing with both seasonal customers and you're dealing with year round customers, I Mean, it strikes me the seasonal is going to be all escapism and the year round is going to be, I don't know, maybe local authors. And I just. How do you maintain a curation philosophy for both audiences?
- [32:54]
E
You know, we're, we're better stocked than we should be, probably, but we love that response. We want people to say, I can't believe you had this book. And that is kind of what we go for. So we get, you know, we, we try to have a good breath. We're watching our inventory a lot because books are, you know, there's always new books coming out, but we do really try to have both. It's. It's harder because you don't know who's walking in the door. Like, if in your, in your. In a town where it's all the locals, you know who's coming, you know, the kinds of things that they read. But when you're pulling from. We have a lot of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, people who come for vacation, and we don't, we don't know who that person is walking in. So we want them to say, wow.
- [33:34]
B
Now I, I have. And it, it's probably a terrible thing. I have this image of Vermonters that are singular and maybe even a little bit idiosyncratic. And I suspect there's a lot of them local around you who have written books that will have niche appeal, but some appeal to local folks about the local economy or the local flora and fauna. Yeah, local fauna, the local agriculture, whatever. Do you stock those and do they get really upset if they don't find their book on your shelves?
- [34:07]
E
We do stock lots of those, so we try to do our best to really stock almost any local author. And then lots of Vermont authors in general. Yes, authors always want to find their books on shelves, and we do our best. But some of our, some of our bestsellers would. Is a book called Animal Tracks and Stat, and it's a local author and it's, it's a waterproof guide that you can bring in the woods and do tracking.
- [34:31]
B
What advice do you give if somebody walks into you and says, lisa, we so admire you become a part of the community. You've ingratiated yourself to the town. But I'm thinking of opening a bookstore. So tell me what the greatest advantage is and tell me what the greatest pitfall that I have to worry about.
- [34:47]
E
I mean, the greatest advantage. I mean, we've talked, we've touched on it a lot. I really think it is being part of the community. So, I mean, obviously Books are amazing and being around books is amazing and I love to read and we like to have contact with authors and all of that is incredible. But I do think having that place in the community and being able to touch all parts of the community is probably the most precious part of it, where we're able to help people in all kinds of ways. We're able to talk to so many people. It's just that's, that's the part I think that feels most important. And the hardest part probably that to work on is, is, you know, cash flow and stuff like that. It's really mundane, but it's really important and making sure that you know how to stock the store, how to staff the store, when to be open. It's, it's, it's those kind of things that can sort of hurt you if you don't have a good plan.
- [35:38]
B
Some people have told us once you get an employee, they're going to be with you because employees love books and they love to be able to talk books with customers, et cetera. Do you have a very loyal stock of employees?
- [35:50]
E
We do, we do. It's not a, it's not a huge stock, but it, the, the average length right now is probably like 10 years or something. 15 years. Yeah, it's pretty long. So people stay with us at the store for a long time because it is, it is great to be in a bookstore.
- [36:07]
C
Before we let you go as a bookseller, sell me a book. What's a lesser known book you recommend to everyone?
- [36:13]
E
One that I read this year that I think is a bit lesser known, but I like. And it, but it is from this year. It's this new one. I'll hold it up so you guys can see. It is Saoirse by Charlene. And I love this.
- [36:23]
C
Okay.
- [36:24]
E
But it hasn't, it hasn't been huge. Huge. And it's the story of a young woman who is in Ireland, but she's from the United States. And her story is unfolding very slowly. And you start to find out about the trauma that she has gone through in her past growing up, but you don't know what that is. The story in the beginning, and it is beautifully written and just an amazing character.
- [36:51]
C
I just love story stories like that. Stories where, you know, the community forms change when the bookstore have to move locations and they pass the inventory from one hand to the other just to help them out. I love stories like that. Again, bookstores are the heart of the community.
- [37:06]
B
Well, you told me about working with some folks who had a huge collection of books that got flooded and how they stank cleaning it all out and
- [37:17]
C
all the pages stick together and the pages stick to everything is the worst anyway.
- [37:22]
B
And she said the water was up four feet, she said. So getting through that and how a community helps. It's really important. As I say, the bookstore important to the community. The community important to the bookstore. We'll tell you who's involved with keeping this podcast going week after week after week, and then we'll have a coda from Kevin Powers.
- [37:45]
C
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of eight ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America, and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode description.
- [38:14]
F
My coda would be a quote that I came across from Joseph Campbell that I've been thinking about probably on a daily basis for the last 25 years, which is participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. And that's something that I try to put in my writing, even though I gotta be honest. I haven't quite figured out what it means. But it's something I enjoy thinking about.
- [38:42]
J
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