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So long shovel, hello bookmark

Sarah Cannady

Under “hours of operation” at the Web site of The Literary Lion, downtown Stephenville’s antiquarian bookstore, there’s a clue as to how Sarah Cannady came to be its owner and proprietor. The site advises out-of-town visitors to call or email before visiting the shop “on the off-chance that [I've] … been hit by an SUV, again.”

Ask Cannady about it, and you might get this explanation (which I got, and admired for how much was packed into a mere 23 words): “For seven years I shoveled horse manure for a living. Then I got hit in the head and woke up the book lady.” The wordier, and more conventional, explanation is that Cannady, a Stephenville native, had taken a job after high school at a horse training facility in Dallas. One day, when she was riding in a wagon drawn by a horse, an SUV had plowed into it, leaving her with severe head trauma and “an astonishing number of broken bones.” That was the end of her horse career. The shovel was retired.

But the start of her book selling career followed the recuperation. The Literary Lion already existed, but its owners were ready to embrace their grandparenthood and wanted to sell. Thanks to what she calls “a circuitous and wonderful chain of events,” Cannady — essentially broke and still physically impaired — was able to buy it in 2005. Three years later, she added a satellite store across the street, where 54,000 paperbacks are displayed. (The main store has 72,000 hardbacks, and there are another 250,000 books in storage.)

Page from the Bible's Book of Ruth

I learned three things from Cannady which put Stephenville in a new, different light. First, a generation ago there were a significant number of Amish people in the area. About 20 families migrated to Erath County to work in the numerous dairy operations in the area. But almost all have moved on, as a New York Times story from 1987 predicted would happen: “Most of the Amish still see their life in Texas as temporary and hope to return to a simpler life elsewhere.”

Second, Latin was taught at Stephenville High School well into the 1990s. I couldn’t find good data on this, but I’ll bet Latin hung on longer hereabouts than it did at many other school systems.

Third, the hottest items at Literary Lion are — get this — books written in Greek. “I can’t keep Greek books in stock,” Cannady says, and Latin texts fly off the shelf, too. She says her biggest buyer of Greek books is an area farmer, who regularly visits the shop in his overalls.

Finally, a little bit of record-keeping: The oldest book in the place is Robert Barclay’s “An Apology for the True Christian Divinity,” the seminal defense of Quakerism published in 1678. And the customers who traveled the longest distance to visit The Literary Lion were a couple from Germany, who’d heard about the shop and wanted to see it.

Yes, they called ahead.