Predictably, after returning from a long stint of travel and visiting, I hid out at the homestead for a while. Michelle found reasons to go to town about twice a week, but I held out until last Thursday before venturing to the “big city” again. Inevitably, I spent much of my town time in my favorite downtown location, the Haines Public Library.
As usual, I started at the sale book racks, where people bring used books for the library to sell. Culls from the stacks end up there as well. It’s a great place to pick up a cheap read. As I looked, I kept half an eye out for my own book, Shy Ghosts Dancing: Dark Tales from Southeast Alaska. I had donated a copy when it first went to print late last year, but the staff warned me that they would not be able to add it to the stacks unless a larger library somewhere added it first, assigning it the proper tracking codes. Michelle traveled to Juneau shortly after that, and took a copy to the library there. She was told that it would need to be evaluated, and that if it failed to pass muster, it’d end up in their library bookstore for sale. As far as I know, someone picked that copy up for about 25ยข not long after.
I didn’t see it on the Haines sale rack, and moved on to my next “station,” the new book shelves. From there I drifted to the videos, and onward.
When Michelle finished her class, she met me, and we went to get our lunch from the car. On the way out, we lingered at the new book shelves again while Michelle browsed. To my surprise, a familiar cover caught my eye. There on the new fiction shelf was my book. I’m in the library!
The next day I checked the Juneau Public Library’s online catalog, to see if they had, in fact added my book. They hadn’t. Then, I tried Kettleson Memorial Library, Sitka, Alaska’s lovely little library. Their online catalog shows Shy Ghosts. I forget that Sitka is a larger town than Haines (I think it was about the size Haines is now when I lived there almost 40 years ago). I think an old friend of mine, who volunteers at Kettleson, is responsible for this, but she’s not saying. However it happened, I’m glad to be in the library in more than my usual sense.