Going the Extra Mile

When Linda Ramsdell, owner of Galaxy Bookshop in Hardwick, Vt., and president of the New England Booksellers Association, gets behind a book, she really gives it her all. In the case of Canadian poet and short-story writer Michael Crummey's first novel, River Thieves (Houghton Mifflin, June), a July/ August Book Sense pick about the collision of European settlers and the Beothuk Indians in the early 1800s, it was not enough for her to simply display the book at the front of her store. Instead, Ramsdell went an extra couple hundred miles and personally escorted Crummey on a tour of bookstores in the Green Mountain state.

"I read the book last November and really loved it. I would have liked it anyway, but I have a propensity for books set in Newfoundland," Ramsdell told PW. The tour gave her a chance to support the book and to get out and visit other booksellers. "It's like a warm up for Read Around New England," she said, referring to this fall's NEBA-sponsored 10-day celebration of books and authors.

Crummy also met other writers. His tour kicked off with a barbecue at Ramsdell's house with Howard Frank Mosher, author of The Fall of the Year, and his wife, Phillis, poet David Budbill and Harmful to Minors author Judith Levine. The next day, Crummey and Ramsdell visited with Jeffrey Lent, author of In the Fall, before Crummey signed his books at Ramsdell's store and at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, the Norwich Bookstore in Norwich and Misty Valley Books in Chester. His visit culminated with a climb up Mt. Equinox and a reading at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester.

"It seems as though the proximity to Canada makes New Englanders receptive to books about Cape Breton and farther north," noted Houghton Mifflin marketing manager Carla Gray. "When I pitched River Thieves to Book Sense, it was the New Englanders who were most responsive," she said. As a followup, Houghton is shipping River Thieves easelbacks—with quotes from Charles Frazier, Kirkus Reviews and Ramsdell—not just to New England, but to all Book Sense stores. Crummey did a pre-launch last March with booksellers in New York City, Minneapolis and Portland, Ore. After the book came out, he did readings and signings in Maine, Vermont, Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash.

As a nominee for Canada's prestigious Giller Prize, Crummey is one of a growing number of younger authors who represent a Canadian literary renaissance. Still, it can be hard to break out books from across the northern border. "Canadian books do face somewhat of a challenge in the U.S.," said Houghton senior editor Anton Mueller. "Yet River Thieves is an intelligent and provocative portrayal of European-Native contact. Crummey is so brilliant not only with his characters, but with the landscape and the interaction between the two."

For Crummey, the U.S. publication has been "terrifying or exhilarating, from one day to the next. I think in Canada there was a certain level of interest based on the fact I was dealing with a part of our history. In the States, of course, it will stand or fall on the literary merits alone."

If Linda Ramsdell has anything to do with it, River Thieves won't get lost in the cross-country shuffle. On her first day back at Galaxy, she sold two more copies of River Thieves.