← The Book Case
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- [00:00]
Narrator/Host (30 for 30 podcast)
In 2023, a source sent me a tip. It tied baseball's biggest star to a vast illegal sports betting operation, Shohei Ohtani. But then someone surprising confessed to me, his best friend.
- [00:17]
Ippei Mizuhara
I'm Ippei Mizuhara, and you do have
- [00:19]
Narrator/Host (30 for 30 podcast)
permission to record me from 30 for 30 podcasts. This is the betrayal of Shohei Ohtani. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
Foreign.
- [00:37]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Welcome all back to the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie. This is the podcast that comes with a money back guarantee and you get coupons for what? I don't know. What else do we provide our listeners, Kate?
- [00:50]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Well, for those who don't win, they get a copy of our take home game. Enjoy the the fun of the bookcase in your own living room. Okay, I don't know where we're going
- [00:58]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
with this, but nowhere is the answ.
- [01:01]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
We have a book this week from an author named Stephanie Swallow. This is her first novel and it's called should the Waters Take Us? And I fell in love first and foremost with her words, but then I fell in love with the place that she was describing and with the character she created within that place. So you should probably take it from there.
- [01:21]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Well, it's not an area that I think most Americans know well. She writes about the Mississippi Delta, about the bayou in Louisiana, the bottom of
- [01:31]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
the boot, if you will.
- [01:33]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
The bottom of the boot. And a story that goes back many generations. She takes you back with brief glimpses of where her protagonists and her characters come from. And one of the central questions that the novel asks are, why are these people there? The land is very tenuous. She writes about the land that these people are living on. 40 acres, gone. How many more each year? Land is always. Except when it isn't. And yet there is a fealty, a loyalty to the land that, that she ponders all the time.
- [02:03]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Well, it's mirrored, and it's mirrored in the people, I think. You know, the. The land is sort of a hodgepodge of different things, very rich in soil and rich in water, but also, like, it's a. It's a complicated mishmash of things like the Acadian and Cajun people that occupy the land and these people who have been there for generations. And it's. It's not as simple as, you know, I staked out this farmland for my family 400 years ago, and it's been chipping away a little at a time. It's literally, the land may not exist in four years. It's a fascinating book with really memorable writing I loved this book.
- [02:38]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah. As I say, not an area that people know well, but you will come to know it, I think, through this novel, through the richness of her writing. In some ways, it's a love letter to an area of the country that may not deserve, in many people's minds, a love letter. But she is drawn to it. She lives in other parts of the country now. She teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago. And how lucky her students are. But she feels the pull back to this area from whence she came, as people do. People are drawn, I think, always back to the area of their origin. And so one of the things is she wants you, the reader, to understand something about this area through her novel, which is a very rich plot to it. I think also she's trying to understand it fully herself.
- [03:24]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting that you say that because we've now had quite a few authors talk about the places they can't get away from. Jay Ryan lives in Los Angeles, but he says he'll probably never stop writing about Minnesota, the place of his birth, because he can't stop unpacking it. Jasmine Ward, returning to Mississippi and writing about how achingly beautiful and difficult and complex it is to be a woman of color living in Mississippi. But there's something about your homeland, there's something about where you come from that's speaks to your soul. And Stephanie Swallow writes beautifully about it. And before we get started on the interview, we had her do a bit of a reading because we thought it was a great way to launch into the first questions we wanted to ask her. So here we have Stephanie Swallow reading her own words from her new book, should the Waters Take Us?
- [04:12]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
The source of the despair. Katrina, of course. The boat he lost, swept away by the storm surge. A woman he found floating in the marsh, drowned in the days after his unhappy wife, eager to leave the state altogether. His young son, strange and shy and so much like himself it frightened him. The weight of the past, the weight of the future. Every year another hurricane season. How does anyone keep going in the face of perennial disaster? What sensible person can hold on to faith when storms or oil or war or famine destroys his world again and again? Most men are not Job, content to scratch their boils on the ash heap of their former homes and praise God for their own spared lives? We all feel such dread, Fabian said to the man, but we must go on living. Even so, why must we? The man replied.
- [05:11]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Stephanie Swallow, it is so good to have you in the bookcase. The new book should the waters take us? The reading you just did, I think, is a great lead in to some questions that we had. Why do people stay year after year? Hurricane season, disaster, shifting waters.
- [05:27]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
That was one of the questions that was at the top of my mind when I was writing this book and is at the top of my mind anytime I visit. My relationship to Louisiana is full of longing. There is something incredibly special about the place and the particular mixture of cultures and languages and people and the landscape is. It's beautiful in its own kind of way. But more than the beauty, it's not a dramatic beauty. It's not like visiting Yosemite, which is like going to a cathedral. It's the kind of beauty that, in a very practical way, sustains people, in addition to a spiritual way. So it's such a rich place, and I think that's why people stay and why people want to stay. And there's so much wrapped up around, you know, food and community gatherings, around eating. And the eating is drawn from this place. So I think that's what people want when they want to stay. And there's no other place to live exactly in that way.
- [06:30]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
But in some ways, you're talking about folks that live in the bayou, in the swamps, and they love this land. But I even started asking myself as I read this book, when you get to this part of the country where there is so much water, how do you even define the word land?
- [06:47]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
There's sort of a labyrinthine, Kafkaesque kind of, you know, problem of land ownership in Louisiana, especially, because there's so much land loss. It's the deltaic system that is the marshlands, the wetlands down there. It's sort of a natural process that it's always shifting. It changes, you know, but there are processes at work now due to the levying of the Mississippi River. That's an interesting quandary, right? That land has historically been fed by floods. The Mississippi river floods. It deposits all the sediment from, you know, further up in the. In the country. That's what builds the land. But you can't have settlements there. You can't live there if the river is constantly flooding, which is why they built the levees, which is why there is no rebuilding of the land. So the land is sinking. There's widespread erosion. Louisiana has lost, basically, the state of Delaware by now and stands to lose so much more. It loses a football field every hour, 25 to 35 square miles a year. It's a tremendous amount of land loss, partly due to the levying of the Mississippi river. That's exacerbated by oil extraction practices. So cutting canals through this very fragile landscape allows saltwater to come in. It kills the grass, and the land washes away.
- [08:12]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
I want to go back to the questions in the reading that you did. Every year, another hurricane season. How does anyone keep going in the face of such perennial disaster? What sensible person can hold on to faith when storms or oil or war or famine destroys the world again and again?
- [08:31]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
This isn't a question specific to Louisiana. You know, it's not a regional question, but thinking of Louisiana in particular, you know, people leave. It's getting expensive to live there. You know, flood insurance is a real. It's a real problem. People leave the state, they get tired. But the people who stay, I think you stay because of a sense of community attachment. There was a community of indigenous, you know, Houma, Biloxi, Chitamat, indigenous people on Ile de Jean Charles. I don't know if you've. You're familiar with this, but it was this little. It had been an island, a sandbar kind of island, and then the erosion eventually made it so this island where people had community and were living was just a strip of road, you know, with the water lapping up on either side, and there was really nothing left. There are a few people, I think, still holding out, but they're one of the. One of the first or maybe the first climate refugees in the US they had to relocate the entire community north and supposedly got to keep their community, but detaching it from the place where the community was made. I think, you know, they lost something, too. But I don't know, you hang on to the. You hang on to whatever attachment you can. I feel like my relationship with Louisiana, particularly in these political times, is. It's like a relationship with a parent or, you know, any close family member, you know, and to see the whole place, to see everything that the place is, is an act of love. I was listening to your interview with Jesmyn Ward the other day, and she's lovely. You know, we were roommates in San Francisco. You know, like scissor dices. Yeah. And she's the sweetest person in the world and so brilliant, and I loved what she said about Witness. Witness is an act of love. Was that it? And I don't think you're doing anyone any favors doing anyone any, you know, real respect by presenting them as a two dimensionality. Everything that Louisiana is, you know, for better or for worse, is part of the fullness of its being. And if you can't love it for everything that it is, in spite of everything that it is, then that's not love.
- [10:46]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
We've featured novels on this podcast where plot seems paramount. We have talked about others that revolve around characters. But central to your novel is place.
- [10:58]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Yes, it is very much about place and this particular place, which will not be familiar to everyone. And part of moving away from Louisiana, I think, helped me to put into perspective the very particular place in a more global way. It's regional, but it is not just regional. You know, what's happening in Louisiana is analogous to what is happening in the Niger Delta, which is why I wanted to include this voice that takes us away from Louisiana a little bit, or what's happening. What's happening to the Aral Sea or any place that is experiencing this profound environmental change. What do you do with your sense of home if the place around you is changing? There's this. Have you come upon the phrase or the word solestalgia? Are you familiar with that? There is a. An Australian environmental philosopher, and his name is escaping me. That's embarrassing right now. But he coined this. This word solastalgia, which was a word to describe the homesickness you feel for a place that's changing around you. You haven't left. It's just not the same place. That is certainly true in Louisiana. It's not just Louisiana.
- [12:18]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
It strikes me that this first novel, as my father says, it's about an obscure people that are very well known. Is there a prevalence of written records when it comes to studying this land? How did you go about that?
- [12:30]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
I spent some time down in the coastal parishes, and this was right after Katrina. I had already had the book in mind before I started going down there. But, you know, just talking to people, seeing how people lived, hearing them talk about the place, the ways that they talked about the place and their relationship to it, that was the first seed of the research. And then there are a tremendous number of scholarly pieces, of course, but oral histories, just sort of collections of voices. And that's what I think I relied on most heavily. And, you know, not just, you know, not just sort of formally assembled oral histories, although those were. Those were excellent, too. There's the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and in a way, AA has a wonderful repository of oral histories, in particular one about the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf Coast. I relied very much on that. Oral histories of oil development in South Lafourche Parish, which is the particular place I called it something different in the Book, but as just people telling their stories, or more informally. There was, I found, this very thin little volume put together by high school students of stories their grandparents told them, you know, and so I loved the sort of raw material of all these voices.
- [13:53]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
This book has multiple perspectives, and there's a lot of different points of view that you write from. Did you write this book in order? And did you know that Fabian and Rosa were the voices with which you wanted to end when you started?
- [14:08]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
I did not write it in order. I sort of went where my mood took me in any particular day. But I did know I wanted this polyphonic structure for some of the reasons I said before that my research and just my experience of Louisiana is just this. You know, it's a chorus of voices. It's not a single voice. And I knew that I wanted Rosa's voice to come in again toward the end and that those. Actually, those lines I knew were going to be the last lines from a very early point in the process, largely influenced by As I Lay Dying. Do you. Do you know and love that novel as much as I do? I just visited the Faulkner house in Oxford, and it was absolutely wonderful. We sat on his grave at midnight and poured out some. Some whiskey for old Papa Faulkner. But in that novel, Addie Bundren is the. She is the one who's dead, you know. You know, she. She's. You know, we get a sense of what her dying was like. We don't get her voice until the penultimate chapter, and then we really get it. And I loved that. I thought that was so heartbreaking to have her silence through the whole novel and then finally hear her. And I. I wanted to steal that, you know? You know, and so that was the idea of including Rose's chapter last after she'd been silent from the first third of the novel.
- [15:36]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
You do spend a fair bit of time in the novel writing about the origins of those who have immigrated to the bayous of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta. Why was that important that I understand their origins? And is it important in understanding their feeling about where they wind up?
- [15:55]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
And by origins, we're talking 400 years, readers and listeners. We're talking 400, 500 years in some cases.
- [16:02]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
Right?
- [16:03]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
I think that part of the equation, again, I was trying to answer that question, why do people stay? Why do people get committed to a particular place as home? Part of the answer to that question, or at least part of the equation, is that we are all tenuously connected to home. And so those. The parts of that history that I wanted to include were moments when people were forced from a place that they had become attached to. They had to go off and find a new home. And this is also not new. You know, we're wanderers. So yes, we can absolutely feel thoroughly committed, spiritually connected to a place, but, you know, is it really our place? And you know, what happens if the place is changing and we're probably going to have to leave that place anyway?
- [16:53]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
One of the things that a number of authors have told us is that you need something right at the beginning to hook a reader. And you have in the first two pages something that so shocked me and got me to say, my God, did I just read what I read? And go back over it again. And I thought, if the rest of this is as monumental as what I just read, this is going to be a great ride. Why did you do that? Was it conscious to hook me in?
- [17:22]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
I think I know the bit that you're. Does it involve barrels?
- [17:25]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
It sure does.
- [17:27]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Okay.
- [17:27]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
And not whiskey barrels.
- [17:30]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
No, that was a story that was told to me as a sort of family legacy story by one of my first interview subjects. So that was true, at least in as much as it had stayed in the family lore, right?
- [17:47]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah.
- [17:48]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
And it stuck out to me, you know, setting that act, which is horrifying against what I was also learning about what happened during that storm. And that was also true that at least one person went out in his boat and helped to save all of these people. Putting that together with this other act, you know, in the same character, seems to me like exactly the kind of contradiction that is at the moral heart of all these stories. Do you do the best thing for your family in the moment, for your son on the boat, for yourself, which is a horrible thing sometimes for others. But then, I don't know, we're also capable of these tremendous acts of love and generosity and heroism.
- [18:39]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
I can assure readers, if you pick up should the waters take Us and you read those first two pages, if that doesn't keep you going, I don't know what will. Stephanie, thanks again.
- [18:49]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Appreciate it so much.
- [18:50]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Thank you so much.
- [18:51]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
And when we come back, we'll have some rapid fires for Stephanie Swallow Foreign.
- [19:01]
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- [19:45]
Ippei Mizuhara
In a sunny Californian suburb, one family's home is unusually quiet.
- [19:50]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
When detectives walked into that house, they
- [19:52]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
said that it was like time just stood still.
- [19:55]
Ippei Mizuhara
It's 2010, and the McStay family is nowhere to be found inside the home. No clear answer where the family could have gone.
- [20:03]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Husband, wife, and two children, all gone. Like, poof. Disappeared.
- [20:08]
Ippei Mizuhara
The search for the McStays quickly captures the nation. But for years, the search for answers only brings more questions.
- [20:15]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Who's ever heard of an entire family going missing?
- [20:18]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
A family of four doesn't just drop off the face of the earth with no contact.
- [20:22]
Ippei Mizuhara
Is this a family on the run? Or is the truth far more sinister? From ABC Audio in 2020, this is what happened to the mixed days. Coming August 11th, wherever you get your podcast or subscribe to 2020 True Crime plus on Apple Podcasts for ad, free episodes, early access to new episodes, and so much more.
- [20:51]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Some rapid fire questions for Stephanie Swallow. Is there a movie that, well, depicts the area about which you write?
- [20:59]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
You know, I really loved especially for its, like, crazy left turn and sort of fantastical elements. Beasts of the Southern Wild.
- [21:09]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
What is the most commonly misunderstood thing about Louisiana?
- [21:13]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
That Cajun culture is monolithic. For whom the culture is named or a very small part, you know, and the culture more broadly is, you know, Creole people of African Caribbean descent, you know, indigenous people, white Europeans. Cajun is just one name for this broader thing. Yeah.
- [21:33]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Was there an event early in your life that made you think, I want to be a writer, or was there an event that said to you, I can be a writer?
- [21:44]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
I think I was always a watcher, sort of a witness and felt out of place, as many writers do. And so that's the way to find comfort and to make sense of your experience. I remember the moment when I felt the calling as a vocation. You know, I read Les Miserables when I was like 13, and it just seemed like in a novel you can do anything. It's licensed to be creative about, you know, or to be curious about anything. And you can tell history. You can give these, like, heroic characters. So that was the novel that made me really want to do it. I felt like I'd been touched on the shoulder by Victor Hugo.
- [22:29]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
You teach creative writing. Is there a Book that's almost always on your syllabus. Mm.
- [22:34]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
I love Teaching Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It takes them a minute because they're very young to come along with the old man who is the narrator of that. But that's one of my favorites.
- [22:46]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
You've taught creative writing at Stanford. You teach it now at the University of Chicago. Can it be taught, or is it a natural gift that you either have or don't have?
- [22:56]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
I ask myself that question often. I think it's. I think there is a way in which some students come to it more naturally, but in that they have trained their eye to notice the right kinds of things. But I think the craft can absolutely be taught, and even that kind of noticing, I think, can be taught. I try to push them to. Don't just give me the received ideas that you see and, you know, don't tell me what you learned from tv. Use your eyes.
- [23:26]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Lesser known book you recommend to everybody?
- [23:28]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
It's not so much lesser known. It has had some pretty great critical reception, but it's still, I think, kind of flying under the radar. The Hill by Harriet Clarke. I don't know if that has come across your desk yet.
- [23:40]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
No.
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Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Harriet is absolutely brilliant and absolutely the heiress of Marilyn Robinson's beautiful, contemplative, wise prosecution.
- [23:51]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
What in your mind, makes a perfect day?
- [23:53]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Oh, any day when I can be out near water. I mean, also what I should say is, oh, with my kid and my husband and my dogs, you know, of course. But I enjoy my own company. And if I can go out on my little inflatable kayak and just float and explore, that is often a perfect day.
- [24:16]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah. Anyone you want to say hi to?
- [24:19]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Oh, like in the world? Yep. Yeah, Yep.
- [24:23]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Anybody, anywhere?
- [24:24]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Oh, that's a hard one. Yes. George Saunders. I love him so much. I can't wait to meet him. I mean, I met him once briefly at Stanford when we were there. Hey, George. Lincoln and the Bardo is one of my favorite novels. I read it when my father had just died, and it was such good company for my grief.
- [24:42]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
I hope you don't meet him in the Bardo.
- [24:44]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
No, I hope not.
- [24:51]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
You know, once again, I was taken by this book just because it's so much about what brings communities together and what tears them apart. And it's not an area of the country that I knew a lot about, but not only did I sort of really fall in love with the country through this book, but it really served as a microcosm, I think, as she said internationally, for so many different Communities of the world dealing with environmental change.
- [25:15]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah. Yeah, we have a bookstore for you. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, we talked to Josh and Natalie Macy, who have opened Final Draft, the bookstore Final Draft in the Delano section of Wichita, Kansas. And they were so enthusiastic and they were so excited about their opening that it was infectious. And we talked to them about the soft opening that they had done for two weeks. Just people wanted to walk in. They weren't advertising, they weren't doing anything for the first two weeks to sort of get up to cruising speed. And then they had a hard opening. And we said, well, we want to hear how the hard opening went. We'll come back and talk to you a couple of weeks after you've opened. So we did that. It is Final Draft, the bookstore in Wichita, Kansas. So we talked to you a couple of weeks ago. You were in the middle of your soft opening. Now things have gotten hard, I guess a hard opening, and probably a little harder in terms of what you're having to do. So how's it going, Josh?
- [26:18]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
It's going great. It's. It's going grand.
- [26:20]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah.
- [26:23]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
Yeah. I think the business continues to thrive. The community support has been great. And, yeah, we're seeing consistent throughput of people, like, we're seeing consistent people showing up daily. And I think. I don't know, probably no more on, like, the book side of things, how. How that's trending. But it seems like overall, across the drinks and the books and everything, the community loves it.
- [26:45]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
So tell me about the grand opening.
- [26:46]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah, give us a blow by blow from the nervous anticipation at the beginning to thank God they're gone, and the
- [26:52]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
turning of the closed sign at the end, really.
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Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
I had anticipated kind of a slow, soft opening, but for two weeks, we just were packed every day. And the grand opening was the same thing. The city showed up, and the area, Delano, they came and did a ribbon cutting, and it just was amazing.
- [27:13]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Were there lines? Was there? Did you just sell more than you expected?
- [27:17]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Did you sell about what you expected? And did you sell more books, drinks, coffee, what?
- [27:22]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
Yeah, definitely more than we expected. And I think there were lines. I mean, there's like.
- [27:27]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
There were.
- [27:27]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
The day is, like, kind of fuzzy in my mind. It was. There were times where, like, both of our families were there. And I come from a big family. His is a little bit smaller, but they all were in the back. And so it just was, like. It was chaotic, but it was fun, chaos.
- [27:46]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
So what did the two of you do? Did you work the cash register?
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Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Did you work the floor?
- [27:50]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
Yeah.
- [27:51]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Yeah. What'd you do?
- [27:52]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
Yeah, we just siphoned through all of it. Restocking the bookshelf, straightening them up, taking orders, making coffee.
- [27:58]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
I was doing cocktails, and I've been joking that, like, I'm not. Physical strength is not my strength. And so when we shake the cocktails. Oh, my gosh. He has to rub my back.
- [28:11]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
It's hard.
- [28:12]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
It's. It takes a lot to. It takes a lot more to be a barista bartender than I ever imagined. I have much so, so much respect now for that profession. But, yeah, we do it all. Cash register copy. I feel like I started this saying, like, we want to do something for our community. We want to bring something new to our community. And now my reflection, almost three weeks later, is, like, this was all done because of the community. So, like, seeing the people that showed up, having the support that we have from all of the local coffee shops. I mean, even the other day, I called one of them because our plastic cups were terrible, and the owner of a coffee shop brought over their cups for us to use.
- [28:54]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Oh.
- [28:54]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
So I think that, like, there's this overwhelming sense of acceptance, support, love. Like, it's. I. They just carried us through this.
- [29:07]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
So you told us about some of the drinks, and I love the names.
- [29:10]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
Yes.
- [29:11]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
I loved the Orient Espresso Martini in cold Bloody Mary. I loved. Are you there, God? It's me, Margarita. So are the drinks selling because of their contents, or are they selling because of the names you dreamed of?
- [29:23]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Or maybe they're just selling because they want to see your wife go through some good, hard manual labor. And everybody was like, let's go see Natalie ruin her back.
- [29:33]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
It's a little bit of that, too.
- [29:35]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
The espresso Martini is the one that you shake the longest in its most ordered alcohol cocktail. So, yeah, I think that people like then our espresso Martini. I wanted it to be strong. It's my favorite drink. And so we always kind of warn people, like, we can add a little bit of sweetness if you want. But I think people like it because it's coffee forward and it's made with our local coffee, so I think that is probably our most popular blend. And then we have a mocktail, which.
- [30:04]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Ooh, I love mocktails.
- [30:06]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
I named incorrectly, which is kind of like a running joke, but it's a
- [30:10]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
mid midsummer night cream.
- [30:14]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
A midsummer night cream. And it's like a juice, sparkling water, agave lime drink. But it's. It's one of our most very popular.
- [30:24]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Excellent, Excellent. I Love a good mocktail.
- [30:26]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
Again, I, you know, it's funny, when
- [30:27]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
we had you on the first time, I said to our listeners, I wish you could see their face. They're like so in love with their space. And now that we're talking to you, it is, it's like talking to new parents who just brought a baby home. You look exhausted, satisfied, tired, excited. Yeah, all of those things.
- [30:41]
Unidentified Speaker (possibly ad voice or minor role)
Thank you.
- [30:42]
Josh Macy (Co-owner of Final Draft Bookstore)
We are, we are all of those things.
- [30:50]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
So it is great fun talking to the owners, Natalie and Josh Macy of the Final Draft Bookstore in Wichita, Kansas. Their enthusiasm is infectious. They seem very, very well. It's a young couple. They're excited. They're on a new adventure, and we wish them all the best. You want to check in with them again sometime, Kate?
- [31:07]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Oh, absolutely. Again, I feel like this is, I mean, again, a cheesy metaphor, but I feel like we talked to them right before they went to the hospital and now we've talked to them with their healthy newborn that they're in love with. And we'll watch it as it grows. Like, at least that's, that's what I hope for all independent booksellers everywhere. Is that what they open and going to work every day is everything that they dreamed of because it's a tough job to do well and to do right. And so it's so lovely to talk to these folks.
- [31:32]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
Hard work, but hopefully very rewarding for them. And I hope Natalie's muscles get built up as she makes those drinks. Once again, we thank you for joining us for another episode of the Bookcase. The the podcast with the money back
- [31:46]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
theater copy of our Take Home game. See, you guys can see what a swindler salesman he is. He doesn't even remember the promises he made you like 30 minutes ago. This is why he doesn't sell things. Anyway, we will remind you about the
- [32:01]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
folks that make this podcast possible.
- [32:03]
Kate (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
And then a coda from Stephanie Swallow.
- [32:06]
Charlie (Co-host of The Bookcase podcast)
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions and our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make special mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg and Ariel Chester of ABC Good Morning America and Josh Cohan of ABC Audio. You can follow us and rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like to find any of the books mentioned on this podcast, you can find them listed in the episode description.
- [32:38]
Stephanie Swallow (Author)
A final thought playing on repeat in my mind right now is Gillian Welsh's song Everything is Free. Be Kind to artists. It's a hard way to make a living, but we do it from love.
- [32:55]
Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Ad Voice)
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- [33:17]
Shopify Ad Voice
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