The light out the window has the crisp edges of an autumn afternoon, and in another hour or so, will soften over the hills in a warm blush. Outside the storefront window, the maple tree burns bright gold. Barbara Theroux, owner of Fact and Fiction Bookstore, where I work as salesperson, display person, stock person and whatever-else-needs-to-be-done person, has sent me to the outer hallway to work on a new window display. I scatter the new texts among a spray of fallen leaves and bittersweet while the town's people filepast, wave hello, stop to study a new title. It is 1993 and I have just finished my graduate writing program at the University. I'm still in Montana working two part time jobs, waiting for my son Brian to finish his last year at Hellgate High School. How these Westerners love their drama, I think, Rattlesnake Middle School, Hellgate High, Screaming Woman Creek, Kicking Horse Reservoir . . .It will be my last winter season in this town, this state. I'm on the cusp of new things. Come spring, I'll be moving on to Idaho and a new job at asmall school&emdash;Lewis-Clark State College, teaching writing and literature. And working on my own writing: a collection of short stories, a novel. I can sense&emdash;at least I hope I can sense big things in the future. Adjoining the front hall of the bookstore is Steve's barber shop, a cozy little space where Steve is sitting in his own barber chair reading a newspaper, black filetooth comb and silver sheers tucked in the pocket of his white barber coat. He's a small, silver-haired gentleman with a birdish manner, as if he were pecking rather than trimming hair. I think what a fine picture he presents. I do not know at that time, nor for several years to follow that Steve, that picture of him and the lively company of the shop next door will work its way into the novel I have just begun to think about writing.

I set a small easel in the window box, prop a children's title up against it. I've just begun to consider the possibility of a larger work. I'd been writing short story up to this point&emdash;learning the art of compression,control, learning to recognize the elegant possibilities of the sentence. But when I'd run my last short story past William Kittredge, one of my many gifted teachers and mentors, he'd proclaimed the story too big for itstwenty-four page britches. "You know, of course, that this is a novel?" he said.

And so I find myself giving into the thought of a larger work. Terrifying. Exhilarating. It's time, I think, and I make room in my head for thebeginning of a book, bring in a couple of the characters, let them move around awhile and inform me of their needs. It's how I work, getting a sense of the people before I ever set them on the page. Chas is there, early on, not a living person I know, thank God, not like the courtly barber next door. Still Chas has become a daily companion never-the-less&emdash;not a comfortable arrangement.

From the stockroom I hear a raucous "whoop." It's Mary Vanek, a mite-sized Texan, and as all things Texas seem to be, larger than her five-foot-nothing frame. Barbara's up in the loft and she calls down, "Must be the new Jim Harrison book," and yes, Mary comes out of the back room with the text snugged to her bosom, a look of glory on her face. Mary's another writing student&emdash;poetry and prose, alternately quoting Roethke or McGuane. She keeps the poetry shelves in order, pours over the catalogues, as we all do, making suggestions to Barbara which we all know Barbara will take seriously. I re-enter the store, admire the Russell Chatham cover on Harrison's book,and then turn to dressing the fiction shelves&emdash;my area of specialty&emdash;short story, novel, contemporary fiction, western writers. The books that I think need more exposure I set face out, place recommendation tabs beneath. We all have our specialties, our preferred areas. Mark works the children's books&emdash;an overwhelming task&emdash;but he knows it all, delights in steering aparent or child to a good book. Dave, a large lovely man, one of the more tender-hearted among us, curiously loves the mystery/thrillers, and John whotends to keep to the computer end of the stores business, gravitates toward the historical, the philosophical, the more obscure texts. The guru of books, the grand poobah&emdash;she who must be reckoned with if we misfile an orderslip&emdash;Barbara Theroux spends a good portion of the day in the loft overlooking the sales floor, like a beneficent mother, ordering books, tracking down shipments, negotiating prices, searching out contacts with publishing houses, locating the sometimes elusive or difficult writer, and shouting down the specific titles when we draw a blank in front of a customer. But she never seems to be as happy, or as at home as when she's on the floor with us, and then she's everywhere at once, moving about, checking, arranging, pointing out the strengths of a section, its weakness. She's a savvy business woman, a scholar of the book world and I have much to learn from her.

It's a tight fitting shop&emdash;not much larger than the small apartment I rent up the Rattlesnake Valley&emdash;and we work to keep it arranged so there's still a sense of space, but cozy, a place people will want to spend time in. And it works. There's a steady stream of customers, many of them dedicated locals now that the tourist season has ended, and yes, Missoula's beencaught up, these last two years, in that teeming influx. Graduated from a small, sleepy cow-town of six years ago, when I'd first arrived there, to a tourist-spawning mecca. I snug the Norman McLean books together. Today he could as easily write a book about Montana titled: A Tourist Runs Through It.

What I find fascinating about working in this place, besides the books, is the contact with community&emdash;person to person. We talk about what books are out, what's coming out soon. We get to know their tastes, their concerns. I hear the rancher's woes about rising land prices and falling markets. We settle in over the stacks and question the seriousness of the zoning restrictions on new development. Like so much of the West this is a town that is experiencing the pleasure and difficulties of growing pains. I once heard Bill Kittredge curse the day he named the Montana anthology The Last Best Place, as if the mass migration of Hollywood celebrities and tireless media attention all hinged on his having unwittingly created the perfect sales pitch. Orange Street has turned into a bottleneck and nobody bothers driving down Reserve anymore unless they have time for a leisurely half hour of congestion. New cineplexes, bistros and coffee shops, houses mushrooming on the hillsides. Whispers about the Walmart that's proposing a store on the edge of town. The Barnes and Noble that is eying property near the shopping mall.

Some part of me is seriously squirreling away all of this, for the work ahead. I pay attention to the people: the locals and transplants, some of them eloquent, while others are sparely spoken or even verging on pre-verbal, but none can be dismissed because they are the flavor and voice of this place, this West I have come so dearly to love. I wait on a customer who asks for a recommendation. I know she will enjoy the new Kingsolver book, but I also suggest Atwood, Munro&emdash;a little bit of a stretch, but sound choices each. They come to trust our recommendations. Not that we get them right all the time, but it turns out that's part of thefun as well, arguing over the merits of a story, what intrigued, excited or dismayed the reader. I briefly think about the possibility of my own work on the shelf someday. What kind of piece it would be, and who that unknownfuture bookseller (some struggling writing student who spends more of his paycheck on books then food) would recommend it to? And the face of writing takes on many faces, becomes the reader, the community, the marketing and promotion, and that's all a tad much to deal with so I push the thought awayand ring her up.

It's nearing the end of a sales day. The light outside the window dims and street lamps flick on. Business slows down enough that I retreat up the stairs to the loft and settle down on the floor next to the teetering stack of galleys and advance reading copies. We booksellers read these. Barbara makes sure of that, just as we work our way through the catalogues. It occurs to me only years later, how integral that entire experience was to my writing career. If writing programs had a lick of sense they'd offer internships in the independent bookstores&emdash;call it Lit in the World 101, or Immersion in Text. I have read more work, become more aware of what the world of books encompasses in the small upper loft of that bookstore than Iever learned in the classroom.

Likewise in the years following I came to appreciate the influence of thatsmall bookstore in writing my first book&emdash;the commitment to community, the regard for issues and how the grand idea in the abstract such as "progress" or "community development" translates in the lives of real people. It's a study in the complexity of the issues, and the profound impact literature can have in people's lives. It's something I try to bring into the classroom as a teacher, knowing that if I can get my students excited about reading, steer them toward other possibilities besides Baywatch they'll find their ways to the bookstores, connect with real people who share their tastes and interests, who can help them explore their fields of interest through books. It doesn't surprise me that throngs of people follow Oprah's recommendations. The reading public is looking for the thing so many smart booksellers have always provided and is too often not available in stores where the clerks are overwhelmed by stock, or have little interest in the art itself, who may as well be working at a McDonald's counter as a bookstore.

Thanks to bookstore owners and sellers, like Barbara Theroux, I have met other writers, been encouraged by their readings, their words, watched the rise of writing careers such as Pete Fromm who came to our store early on, as a fledgling writer, or James Lee Burke who persevered through the hard years, who told me, "You just have to hang on." Thanks to booksellers like this I've had the opportunity to see literature at work in the community. I've had the chance to work with teachers in the schools at book fairs, see the kids come in and exchange their bankroll of coins for the latest Redwall, though now I suppose it's Harry Potter, andbless it all, I say. Keep them reading! It's the independent booksellers who invariably get real literature out into the public eye, that give books like Cold Mountain or Snow Falling on Cedar, or The English Patient, TheRemains of the Day, any number of fine works of literature the recommendations and shelf life necessary to succeed.

I've been privileged to be so immersed in that thing I have been passionate about all my life&emdash;reading and writing&emdash;granted the opportunity to see literature from its many varied angles. But truthfully speaking, one of the brightest, most satisfying, was in that small town bookstore in Missoula, Montana.