Supporting Your Independent Bookstore and a Friend

October 11th, fellow blogger and friend, Audrey Kletscher Helbling, posted the news that her poem, “Funeral During a Pandemic” had been published in an award winning book- This Was 2020—Minnesotans Write About Pandemics and Social Justice in a Historic Year.


The collection was compiled by Paul Lai, a Ramsey County Librarian in Minnesota. If you click the link at “posted the news” above so you can see a photo of the beginning of her poignant poem.

There are 54 pieces of prose and poetry in the volume.  I called the reference librarian at their library and was able to get the

ISBN# 9781087967622

I discovered the book could be ordered from your independent bookstore. So I did!

Here is a nearby independent bookstore, White Whale Bookstore (“a home for book lovers”) in Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh PA, just a few miles from my home.  Today I went to pick up the book. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Hope you have an independent bookstore near you.