When I mentioned to the author that I might stop by the following day to pick up a few books, it wasn't the kind of remark that committed either one of us to be around. It turned out to be a wonderful day, sunny, breezy, and cool, and I sent an email, left a message on Carol's voicemail, and Hilary and I headed over to Northeast Minneapolis to try our luck, intending to make the trip worthwhile in any case by taking a stroll along the Mississippi in hope of sighting a warbler or two, and maybe picking up a few things at Holy Land Deli or the food co-op on Central Avenue.
Carol wasn't home. I rang the buzzer several times. We waited. "Maybe she's out in the garage unpacking books," I said. We were returning to the car when I heard the aluminum screen to the side door rattle and there she was, smiling as she descended the concrete steps to the back yard.
"So glad you came," she said. "And hello, Hilary. I feel like I already know you. Come on back to the garage and I'll get you some books. Tessy won't hurt you."
For most of its life, the book didn't have a title. We weren't sure what kind of a book it would turn out to be. And as we sat on plastic lawn chairs inside the cyclone fence, Carol said, "John, I have to ask you, is this book a nature book or a memoir?"
"I would say it's both. That's part of the charm."
I happened upon the job purely by accident. One morning, while scrolling aimlessly through my Facebook feed, one of those "people you make know" bars showed up—almost invariably strangers, though I'm sometimes curious to find out who, among the individuals I've "friended," also has this unlikely individual as a "friend." On that morning someone I actually knew showed up. Didn't I take a class from that woman in grad school, many long years ago? Yes, it was her.
I didn't imagine Carol would remember me. She'd worked with hundreds of students over the years, and I was in the twilight of my grad school career. I never finished the class--though I still have my unfinished essay on Abbe Raynal's Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of Europeans in the East and West Indies in the basement somewhere. Who knows? It might come in handy someday.
In those days Carol was the head of the James Ford Bell Rare Books Library, on the fourth floor of Wilson Library, and she struck me as a smart, fun-loving woman. I also recalled that during the brief interval that I knew her, she was in the process of self-publishing a book about owls. In those days, that meant "camera-ready" pages and metal plates.
I sent her a message, re-introduced myself, and asked her what she was up to. She replied that she was retired, now ran a used bookstore, and was trying to complete a nature book about a chunk of somewhat marginal land—woods, creeks, bogs, fields—she had purchased in small increments north of Cambridge. I wrote back that I edited, designed, and produced books for a living.
Thus began a four-year partnership, conducted almost entirely via email and snail-mail: editing text, extracting photos from Word documents, formatting pages. I'm sure I have more than thirty flash-drives with Carol's handwriting on them. And I now have twelve gigabytes of material in my Carol Urness folder, though the only files worth keeping, perhaps, are the final PDFs and the InDesign files for the text and cover, which include all the graphics.
It goes without saying that the work was intermittent. We constructed the book, chapter by chapter, and there were extended breaks as Carol dealt with unhappy personal issues. A long-time friend who lived next door and also managed the bookshop died suddenly; another friend lost a struggle with memory issues and had to be moved into a care facility. The pandemic didn't speed things along much, either.
But it was fun. The text was personal and jaunty but also full of particulars about spiders, frogs, mushrooms, and wolves. Working with Carol was like taking a walk in the woods with a skilled naturalist while also getting to know her life story and her friends--Jessie, Mark, and Arnie, to name a few.
As the parts of the book finally came together, timing became crucial, because Carol had received a grant from the University of Minnesota to help finance it, and the deadline for dispersing the money was approaching. Yet the printer we were using had difficulty handling the logistics of receiving payment from several bureaucratic sources for a single project.
In the same way that an ocean storm leaves a residue of gently lapping waves behind, the project's final issue was the cost of delivery. Carol couldn't believe the quoted price was correct—it was too low!—and she almost demanded to pay more.
I volunteered to stop by and help unload the books. Carol had a few neighbors lined up, but said she would contact me if need be. A few days later she let me know that the delivery driver had unloaded the entire shipment in about two minutes, and all was well.
A week later I sent her a note, curious to find out how things were going, and perhaps missing our frequent exchanges a little. Here is her reply.
John--Thanks. I have been doing pretty well, considering that getting the book somehow knocked me off me feet. I really couldn't believe it, I guess. I just sat down and cried. Took copies to the people in the country yesterday and stopped at Scout and Morgan, a good bookshop in Cambridge. They will take it at 60/40 so I get $15 per copy. They have a stock of 25,000 books so they know what they are doing.
Scott and Morgan (named for the wife's two rescue dogs) ... and Corner Books [Carol's shop] would be the only places selling it. I think it works. My chief pain is not getting the mailing boxes yet from Office Max. I would really like the people who helped pay for it to get their copies... anyway, all is just fine. If you want to stop by, Wednesday afternoon would work. I know you will like the book.
Thanks. Carol
P.S. Not many unusual birds in the country--swans gathering at Mud Lake... but at least the country looks green now and mushrooms are showing up ...
As we sat chatting in the yard that afternoon, Carol offered to sign a book for me.
"I've got to tell you," I replied, "that at my first book signing, I thought my personalized remarks were uniformly brilliant. Since that time—that was twenty years ago—I have written so many simple-minded, stupid, and embarrassing things in the course of signing books that I've pretty much given it up. I suspect that every copy of the Seven States travel book that I've personalized says either "Happy trails!" or "Enjoy the trip!"
"I'm so glad you said that," Carol said. "I've experienced that already. 'Dear, dear friend ...' and then I can't think of a single thing to say!" We laughed.
Carol was waiting for the auto repair shop to deliver her Frog so she could visit another friend in memory care.
"We'd be happy to drop you off at the repair shop," Hilary said, "We're just out enjoying the afternoon."
"Oh, I wouldn't trouble you."
"It's not a big deal."
And so, we all hopped in our car--a generic Toyota with manual transmission that we might have named the Silverfish, if there had been any point to it--and off we went.
_____________
Though it isn’t germane to the story, it might be worth mentioning that when my grandmother died, she had an antique book about American history in her possession that passed somehow to her son, Jim. His much younger sister Eleanor (my mother) was an enthusiast of books, history, and reading, and though it wasn’t a big deal, she expressed regret to me several times over the years that she hadn’t gotten that book. Jim and Ellie are no longer with us, but a few years ago I told this story to Jim’s daughter, Pat, with whom Hilary and I often share a lively breakfast.
“I have that book!” Pat exclaimed. “But you should have it. You’re the book person in the family.” Au contraire. Pat is a voracious reader, and so is Hilary. They often exchange books at these breakfasts, and when they get going about their book clubs and reading lists, I just sit back and listen.
But Pat insisted. And I was curious to see the by-now-legendary volume. It turned out to be a small, weathered but intact edition, printed in 1782, of The Revolution in America by none other than L’ Abbé Guillaume Thomas Fronçois Raynal, the man whose work I’d been desultorily studying in Carol Urness’s class so many years ago.
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