If you open Google Maps and search for 1331 E 6th St., Tulsa, Okla., you'll find the location of Hoot Owl Books, a fictional used bookstore. This moment was captured by a Google Street View car in March 2025. The mystery deepens when you add a March 3 Facebook post by Tulsa's Magic City Books: "Uh oh. Look like there's some new competition in town. And we've heard it's run by some pretty unsavory folks." The plot is clarified, however, with the addition of one more sentence: "That being @sterlinharjo and @ethanhawke. #hootowlbooks #fake."
Although Google Maps apparently doesn't know it yet, Hoot Owl Books is the headquarters for Lee Raybon in the brilliant new FX/Hulu TV series, The Lowdown. Created, exec produced, written, and directed by Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs), the series stars Ethan Hawke as an incorrigible bookseller/citizen reporter and self-proclaimed "truthstorian," whose obsessive journalistic pursuits attract attention of the dangerous, if often funny, kind.
Lee lives and works in his used and rare bookstore, tucked in the heart of Tulsa and mostly run by his sometimes paid bookseller, Deidra (Siena East). If you haven't seen the show, I--along with most folks who have--highly recommend it.
I'll confess that one of the many things that drew me in from the start was the key role books and bookstores play in The Lowdown. The Orange County Register offered a good reason "why you should consider checking it out: Partially set in a bookstore with a plot that is triggered by some old Jim Thompson novels, there may be no other show on right now so lovingly aimed at readers, writers and lovers of books (and music) that is also such an ungovernably rollicking crime story.... In fact, early in the show, the line 'You must be a writer' is used as a punchline in a way that only a writer could conjure up--and then love the insult so much that it didn't get cut."
Magic City Books was featured in the first episode as a meeting place for Lee with his ex-wife Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn) and their daughter, Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong): "Did you catch us in the first episode of The Lowdown? Big thanks to Sterlin and the amazing cast/crew for including MCB in this magical mosaic. And that writers room! WOW. Might just be the best show ever for book nerds!"
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Dickson Street Bookshop in Fayetteville, Ark., checked in to note that "you might notice Ethan Hawke with some vintage crime paperbacks their production picked up from us last year when filming the pilot in Tulsa. Also, the always amazing Magic City Books in Tulsa is heavily featured."
Yes, kids, book worlds are colliding out there. Author Erik Larson posted: "At last one of my books has made it to the big screen! (Ethan Hawke in The Lowdown; see shelf behind.)"
Raybon's character was inspired by Lee Roy Chapman, a Tulsa legend who wrote for This Land Press, which noted in its digital publication, the Pickup, that Harjo "honors Chapman's incredible work.... Lee uncovered historical truths that many people in Tulsa would prefer to have kept buried."
"If you watched The Lowdown, 'Hoot Owl Books' looks a lot like Oak Tree Books," the Pickup posted on Facebook, adding that in the series, "Tulsa lore is everywhere. In particular, Lee Raybon's rare bookstore 'Hoot Owl Books' reminds us a lot of @oaktreebookstulsa, where the basis for Raybon's character, Lee Roy Chapman, worked and researched."
Production designer Brandon Tonner-Connolly and set decorator Tafv Sampson spoke with the Decorating Pages podcast about how the team created an authentic bookstore set inspired by Oak Tree Books and with the help of Gardner's Used Books & Music.
Oak Tree Books was launched in 1993 by Scott Dingman and Charles Curtsinger "with the goal of selling rare and out of print books and a focus on Oklahoma and Native American History," a post on the bookshop's Facebook page explains. A couple of decades later, ownership went to co-worker Lee Roy Chapman, whose "commitment to unearthing rare and often forgotten or neglected Oklahoma history and relics was integral to reinforcing Oak Tree Books' place in Tulsa and nationwide as a staple for uncommon and scarce pieces." The bookshop closed in 2016 after Chapman's untimely death, but Sean Stanford reopened it in 2024 at the same location.
The Lowdown's final episode ran earlier this month, and Magic City Books offered a heartfelt goodbye: "What a ride. Big thanks to @sterlinharjo and @ethanhawke and everyone behind THE LOWDOWN. We are honored to have been a small part of your big project. If you haven't seen it, you're doing it wrong!"
It's all about the books, man. Hawke even said as much while covertly signing at a New York City bookshop: "I love my character.... And the whole show, in some strange way, revolves, around his love of books, so I thought I would come to Housing Works Bookstore and I would sign some postcards and slip them inside some books that I wrote and you can come find them.... In the show, I find a very strange note inside a very old book that leads me on a terrible journey. But maybe that's cool... I don't know."
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Episode 5 of The Lowdown might be my favorite, with Peter Dinklage guest starring as the former owner of Hoot Owl Books. From their first scene together until the last, he and Hawke engage in a running banter that's filled with wit, sarcasm, sadness, and a flurry of head-spinning literary and bookselling references.
And yes, my bookish friends, somewhere out there Hoot Owl Books is still in business... kinda. Google Street View told me so.