Buy a Gift Card for $25 or more, & for an additional $10, upgrade it to a Gift Set. Buy a $100 Gift Card and the Gift Set is Free.

Gift set includes Maria's playing cards or your choice of Maria's Mug with a candy cane, pencil & bookmark in a Holiday package.

The Angel Tree was a huge success this year thanks to all of you out there who stopped in and either bought some amazing books for all the kids on the tree or donated to our Angel Tree fund.

Thanks to you, the La Plata Family Center Coalition is delivering books to 223 kids for Christmas this year!

Thank you again for your generosity and support!

I must confess that The Sentence is the first novel by Louise Erdrich that I have read. I can assure you that it won’t be my last. I don’t know how that happened, but after reading her newest, I intend to remedy my mistake immediately.

The Sentence is an entertaining, quirky, mysterious and relevant novel. It is the story of Tookie, an Ojibwe woman has just served 10 years of a 60 year sentence for a crime that is both tragic and humorous. Tookie gets a job as a bookseller at Birchbark Books in Minneapolis (the very same independent bookstore in Minneapolis that Erdrich owns in real life.)  The bookstore specializes in Native American books, has a confessional booth and a proprietor who just happens to be named Louise. 

The store’s most annoying customer, Flora, dies on November 2, 2019 and then returns to haunt the store and Tookie. At first the haunting is amusing. When Tookie is given an almost illegible antique journal that Flora was reading when she died, the haunting intensifies and becomes more threatening. Supported by her husband, Pollux, and fellow booksellers, Tookie tries to navigate her relationships with both the living and the dead.

The story continues to intertwine fact and fiction as the pandemic takes hold, George Floyd is murdered and the city erupts in protests. Readers rejoice when bookstores are designated as “essential” businesses during the pandemic along with “food, fuel, heat, garbage collection and booze.”   

Not only does The Sentence offer an important perspective on our troubling times, it provides an inspiring reading list and an important reminder of the essential role of literature in our lives.