With an astounding sense of timing, Annabel Townsend signed a lease on a new bookstore venture, one week before the Covid-19 pandemic was declared. Not to be deterred by a mere global crisis, she decided that lockdowns were the perfect opportunity to get people reading.

With the world growing ever more strange around it, the fledgling business began providing an essential form of escapism and solace in troubled times – books. Facing a nightmare landlady, extremes of temperature and the occasional conspiracy theorist, and while trying to do everything on a bicycle, it soon became clear that Covid-19 was the least challenging part of
operating the business.

Framed by different works of fiction, these essays tell the stories of the bookstore, of Saskatchewan, and of the community of customers, writers, booksellers and booklovers that the business has built during the extraordinary circumstances of the last few years.

A Thousand Lives is part-memoir, part-comedy and all true – because truth is always stranger than fiction.

Fancy a sneak peek?

Check out the chapter “The Plastic Box that broke us”