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1 How to Be Attacked by Your Heart's Desire 7 2 No Longer Renting the Space Inside My Skin 14 3 Mommy, Where Do Books Come From? 27 4 Follow Your Ignorance Is Bliss 46 5 Holy Grails Full of Frass 61 6 Creating, and Being Created by, Community 71 7 God Bless You for Trying, Losers 82 8 Stephen Saved Our Bacon Day 92 9 Catty Behavior, or How Beulah Taught Us to Stand Tall, Quit Whining, and Have Fun 99 10 Saved by the Cell (and the Napkin Dispensers, and the Corkboards) 104 11 A Book's Value Versus Its Price 109 12 I Dream About Running a Bookstore Someday… 123 13 Running an Unlicensed Intellectual Pub 132 14 Yarn Goddesses 142 15 What Happens in the Bookstore, Stays in the Bookstore 149 16 Growing into Ourselves 154 17 Reading Rekindled 162 18 Last Cowboy 178 19 Living Large in a Small-Town Bookstore 185 20 The Network 197 21 Ceridwen 207 22 The Way We Buy Now (with Apologies to Trollope) 214 23 Booking Down the Road Trip 229 24 Bibliophiliacs Versus Book Snobs 246 25 On Recommending Books 252 26 Citizen Jack 280 27 The Last Word 286

An inspiring true story about losing your place, finding your purpose, and building a community one book at a time. Wendy Welch and her husband had always dreamed of owning a bookstore, so when they left their high-octane jobs for a simpler life in an Appalachian coal town, they seized an unexpected opportunity to pursue thier dream. The only problems? A declining U.S. economy, a small town with no industry, and the advent of the e-book. They also had no idea how to run a bookstore. Against all odds, but with optimism, the help of their Virginian mountain community, and an abiding love for books, they succeeded in establishing more than a thriving business - they built a community. The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap is the little bookstore that could: how two people, two cats, two dogs, and thirty-eight thousand books helped a small town find its heart. It is a story about people and books, and how together they create community.