On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. Participating indie bookstores across Minnesota and the country will offer special events or deals.

We celebrate with particular gusto in the Twin Cities metro, where this year, 37 bookstores are participating in the Independent Bookstore Passport created by Rain Taxi.

Pick up your passport and get it stamped at any participating bookstore through Sunday. Each stamp is a future coupon at that store, and with 10 or more stamps, you can unlock additional discounts and chances to win prizes.

Not sure what to read with all those discounts? Check out the Ask a Bookseller podcast for inspiration.

This week, Victoria Ford of Comma, a bookshop in Minneapolis, recommends a historical fiction novel with a dose of magical realism. It’s Karen Russell’s “The Antidote.”

The novel follows five characters living in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Our title character is a prairie witch who calls herself “The Antidote.” Her service? Taking away the painful memories that people wish to forget and storing them for later retrieval, allowing people to go about their lives unburdened by past hurts. The responsibility of memory — and what we lose when we forget — are key themes in the book.

We also follow a government photographer who comes to take pictures of the Dust Bowl and discovers that her camera can capture images from the past as well as potential futures of the land. Meanwhile, a farmer who came to the U.S. after being driven from his land in Poland struggles with the realization that he is a part of that same crime happening to Native Americans in this country.

The other characters are the farmer’s niece and ...

A scarecrow.

Curious? Me, too.

Happy Indie Bookstore Day.

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

We finish up our Books of Hope series with a sweeping novel that interconnects lives across time through a single drop of water. The book is “There Are Rivers in the Sky” by award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak.

Meghan Hayden of River Bend Bookshop in Glastonbury and West Hartford, Conn., says she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it:

“It just captivates you from the very start as a raindrop falls on the head of an ancient king of Mesopotamia, and he’s contemplating his vast library. And there’s a particular poem that he has on a blue tablet that is the prize possession in his gigantic library.

And we follow this poem, which is lost to time. We follow this raindrop through other characters, as we move from Victorian England to modern-day Syria and Iran, back to modern-day London. It’s vast and sweeping, but also incredibly intimate.

The themes of this book are really around the politics of water, water scarcity, how water is both a life giver and an incredibly destructive force, and how we are all intimately connected by water.

You’ll learn a ton about how rivers and oceans work, how water circles the globe, but all in very personal stories of people’s lives who are revolving around two mighty rivers, the River Thames and the River Tigris.

It really leaves you on a very hopeful note for our own future, as we are reminded that we are all so deeply connected. At this moment, we have an opportunity to look back at our shared history and avoid living some of the same difficult stories over and over.

I felt really inspired by the end of this book.”

— Meghan Hayden

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

When asked for a recommendation for our ongoing Books of Hope series, China Reevers of Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Mont., turned to a book on her shelf that she’s gifted many times: Cole Arthur Riley’s “Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human.”

“I think it is just a beautiful text that is so rich.”

Reevers, who was raised Catholic but now describes herself as spiritual, describes this genre-blended collection as one that you can read in any order, choosing the selections that speak to and nourish you.

The book includes snippets of poetry from well-known writers as well as Bible selections paired with Riley’s poetry, meditations, and breathing exercises, with room for reflection for readers.

The first half of the book has chapters with universal themes, including love, fear, doubt and hope, while the second half reflects on specific holidays, including Juneteenth and the Christian season of Lent.

Reevers says Riley writes from their Black queer experience in an open-hearted way that encourages connection. Reevers' favorite chapter right now is about wonder:

“It starts with snippets of words from Octavia Butler and then Elizabeth Alexander, followed by a letter that the author is writing about what they’re experiencing in their day and finding wonder in the mundane, just watching a grandfather and a child try to find fly a kite.

“And then after that, there is a bit of poetry, and then these different prayers. I think these are all very open to interpretation. There’s prayer for finding beauty in the mundane, a prayer for marveling at your own face, a prayer for stargazing...

“I think often when reading things, you get to pick and choose. You get to read something that you may not think is completely for you, but you find that it is for you in the bits and pieces that you get to connect with and you get to find grounding in.”