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The book "Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling" was first published in 1923. The copy I have has the copyright 2020 Big Byte Books.
There are 12 chapters in this book of 110 pages. Where shall I start in my review? That's a big question, because the contents of the book include a narrative, an autobiography, a journal, and an encyclopedia.
The picture on the book cover is of the author, Madge Jenison, sitting in a chair by the bookshelves in the store. She was born in 1874 in Chicago. When an adult, she moved to New York City and was a teacher.
In 1916, Madge and a friend Mary Mowbray-Clarke opened the bookshop, and it was "one of the first bookstores in America owned and operated by women" (p.1).
Of course I remember the Bound to Read bookstore in Marshall, and I can't forget that my husband Howard signed his books there. I saved the bookmark that gives the phone number, Market Street Mall address, a small drawing of books, and the hours the bookstore is open: M- F 10-9, Sat 10-5:30, Sun 12-5. Friends worked in the store, and I went to a book club there many years ago. The photo you see includes the book cover, the Bound to Read bookmark, and bookmarks I saved from our trip to Wllla Cather's home in Nebraska, and our trip to a huge bookstore in Portland, OR.
A descriptive element all through the book is of customers -- men and women -- coming into the shop and staying for hours, paging through books, sitting and enjoying the sunlight shining through the windows. Once there was "a dog tied to one of the table legs" (p. 18).
Toward the end of the book we read about a man who had a ranch in West Africa with his brothers. Madge goes out to lunch with him, then dinner. After dinner they sit on a bench in Madison Square. He falls asleep. When he wakes up at 3 a.m., he puts Madge in a taxi. For a couple of weeks he is still in New York and continues to come into the bookshop.
A woman customer stayed in the shop all afternoon on a Saturday, thinking about a book to buy for her son. He would soon be sailing to France with the American Expeditionary Force, the Armed Forces the United States sent to Europe during WW I. She talks with the store owner about him, and they both cry.
As the bookstore becomes well known, many people come in and help the owners get books ready to deliver. And they deliver them!
Authors mentioned in the book are Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Christopher Morley, Amy Lawrence Lowell, and Laura Jean Libbey.
We read about the ups and downs of the bookstore. June was always a successful month, and so was December. One August Sunday the owner gathered together books on labor that a woman customer wanted to give as a wedding present.
She writes about many people who want to work in the bookstore. I liked reading about Jean Sebastian Bigger, a pianist from Scotland. He comes into the store, sits and reads. So Madge hires him, but soon he gets another job and leaves. Another example is Lou, a veterinarian who is Irish. He had attended the University of Dublin. Now he's in the stockroom paging through Frederick O'Brien's book Atolls of the Sun. He delivers for the bookstore.
There's a reference to Porter, NE, and a woman who lived there. She wrote to ask for "books to study the Bible as literature" (p. 54).
I looked up Edward Carpenter's book "Coming of Age," c 1914, because Carpenter is a surname on my mother's side. It's a short book about gender roles.
Another reference with lots of meaning for me is about the mail being "a bag of dreams brought in to us four times daily" (p. 13). I still enjoy writing letters and getting letters from friends and family members. Since I live in the country, I have a mailbox at the end of the lane to the County Road. I write with a pen or pencil on a piece of paper, fold the paper to fit the envelope, address the envelope, putting a postage stamp on the front and a stamp of a flower or animal on the back to make sure the envelope doesn't come open. See, that's what my Grandma Blake did, and I have close by a handwritten letter from Grandma with the date Nov. 21, 1961. She sent it to Texas, because I was in college there. The letter ends "I hope you keep well and have all your wishes well. God bless and keep you. I love you. Gram Blake."
"Sunwise Turn" can be ordered through the statewide library system MNLink.org with your Marshall-Lyon County Library card and PIN. Your library has many titles featuring bookstores in both fiction and nonfiction. Try "My Bookstore: writers celebrate their favorite places to browse, read, and shop," edited by Ronald Rice 381.45 RIC or "The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: a memoir of friendship, community, and the uncommon pleasure of a good book," by Wendy Welch, 381.45 WEL . marshalllyonlibrary.org