Come June, I'll be opening the first woman-owned bookstore this region has ever seen. The learning curve has been a steep one, and I'm nowhere near the summit yet, but I'm invigorated to be embarking on a new venture. Besides, what better way to ward off loneliness.
The writer of these words is a character in a novel. Her name is Evelyn Cabot. She writes a column, "A Woman's Place," for Mademoiselle magazine, and the excerpt above was published (fictionally) in the April 1967 issue, after she had moved from New York City to the village of Schuywich, N.Y.--hometown of Hazel McIntyre, the woman she loves--and purchased an old farm that eventually became a bookshop, and much more.
Evelyn lives in the recently published novel Upstate by Kim Van Alkemade (Morrow), which is a November Indie Next list pick. Evelyn shares that bookish space, in alternating chapters and across time, with 34-year-old writer Audrey Beacon, who has escaped the city more recently, after the death of her husband during the early, harrowing days of the Covid epidemic. Audrey purchases the farm and bookshop that Evelyn had established long before. Like her predecessor, she has no experience as a bookseller or a farmer.
There is yet another thread woven into the story in the form of long, narrative letters written by Hazel to Evelyn after the closure of Red Barn Books in 2015, for reasons I won't divulge here. The letters are beautiful, at once heartfelt and heartbreaking.
Bookshop-themed novels have been around for a long time, but perhaps they've never more abundant and popular than during these post-Covid years. There is something healing in the ideal of a cozy little bookshop. Those of us who have been booksellers know the fantasy is complicated, but even we can sometimes fall under the bookish spell.
Upstate is much more than just a cozy bookshop tale, however. Kim really gets it--the complications, I mean--in part because she was inspired by personal experience. She was living in Carlisle, Pa., when she learned that a bookstore on a farm in upstate New York (You can check out the history of Owl Pen Books and local legend Barbara Probst here) was for sale. She seriously considered making an offer, but ultimately did not, though Probst's legacy proved to be inspirational.
Even as a jaded former bookseller, I had no trouble immersing myself in the parallel worlds of Upstate. The bookshop ideal remains intact, while being tempered by reality: the daily challenges of running a business; the enriching and sometimes annoying interactions with a local community; the curious intricacies of a bookish life; and, ultimately, the complexities of love and inevitable loss.
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| Kim Van Alkemade at Northshire Bookstore | |
Although she ultimately decided not to buy Owl Pen Books, Kim remained in the region and in fact has become, in addition to her career as an author, a frontline bookseller at the Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., which recently held a launch event for Upstate that included the reveal of a full wall display for her novel.
So... a bookshop novel by a bookseller. Naturally I had questions, beginning with what Kim's perception of the word "bookseller" as opposed to--or in relation to--"bookshop owner" had been before she considered taking on the role herself.
"I had not yet become a bookseller when my partner and I considered becoming bookstore owners," she said. "Like most people who don't actually work in bookstores, I imagined booksellers spending long hours reading between moments of customer service. When I pictured myself as a bookshop owner, I imagined long hours of writing while staffing the store. Now I know how far from the truth both of these notions are."
Kim has been a bookseller at the Northshire since 2023. I asked if she ever thinks about how radically different her life would have been as Owl Pen's owner compared to being a bookseller in a relatively new shop.
"So different!" she replied. "Writing Upstate allowed me to imagine owning a rural bookshop in a barn and renovating a hundred-year-old house, but working at Northshire made me realize that if I really did own such a bookshop, I'd never have enough time to write a novel....
"As an author, being a bookseller gives me a unique perspective on the business. I've learned about the role of platforms like Edelweiss in spreading the word about upcoming releases, the importance of the Indie Next List for recommending books to booksellers, and the magic of handselling a book I love to a customer looking for a good read. That experience motivated me to visit independent bookstores from Schenectady to Lake Placid and throughout Vermont to deliver advance copies to booksellers in my quest to get Upstate nominated for the November Indie Next List. Northshire has been so supportive of the release, with co-workers writing reviews and Rachel Person, our events director, hosting the launch."
I wondered if she'd returned to Owl Pen Books as a customer. "When I started writing Upstate, which is inspired by the experience of almost purchasing Owl Pen Books, I wanted my imagination to be free to create a new story," she replied. "This summer, I returned to Owl Pen for the first time in five years to gift the new owners an advance copy of the novel. The bookshop was even more charming than I remembered, but smaller than it had become in my imagination."
Because Halloween was approaching when Kim shared her thoughts with me, I had to ask if she had become permanently haunted by the ghost of Owl Pen founder Barbara Probst.
"A good haunting, for sure!" she replied. "For my partner and me, the prospect of continuing Barbara Probst's legacy was a big reason we tried to purchase Owl Pen. After I finished writing the novel, my partner, Mariel, researched more about Barb and her partner, Jean Slocum. Mariel's findings contributed to Owl Pen Books being included in the New York State LGBTQ+ Statewide Historic Context Exploratory Project."