By Mary Adkins

I was so early for the book event that the doors to the venue were locked. I couldn’t wait to get inside and listen to author Stephanie Danler interview Lisa Taddeo about her new book, Three Women.

I’d only been in Nashville for a couple of months, but I’d lived in New York for fifteen years, so I was used to it taking forty-five minutes to travel two miles. The sun had just set as I stood alone outside the industrial space and double-checked the address.

I was the only person in sight.

We’d moved to Nashville for my husband to attend graduate school, and I’d heard great things: there was music, of course, and more space which was invaluable now that we had a new baby.

I’d come full of hope for my new life in the South but when I arrived, I found it impossible to make friends. My new therapist told me to join Meetup.com, and create a group for people like me. I paid $70 to form the group“Moms Who Write!” and scheduled an event for a few weeks away. Two people RSVP’d: a man living in Nova Scotia who looked like Santa, and a lovely woman — my only guest — who told me that, at the previous meetup she’d gone to, a strange man had caressed her arm.

As a writer, I worked alone by vocation. I found a part-time nanny for our one-year-old, and I wrote in coffee shops or in my room until she left at 2 p.m. In the afternoons, I’d take my son to the park and eye other moms. Could she be my friend? Could she?

To say these events were my lifeline during the early days in Nashville isn’t an understatement. I would help out with bedtime, get into my car, and drive across town from our airy townhouse that had begun to feel too spacious compared to our old, cozy apartment in New York, and the windows of Parnassus glowed warm, beckoning me.

Now, as I stood there on the desolate street in the dark, waiting for the venue to open, I thought about the moments throughout my life when I’d felt similarly alone.

Then I heard clicking.

A tall woman with glossy red hair appeared. She was clutching her copy of Three Women over her trench coat. She wore red heels.

“It’s not open yet,” I said.

“Oh, okay,” she said. We stood quietly for only a couple of seconds.

I told her I loved her shoes.

“Thanks! So have you read the book yet?” she asked. I told her I hadn’t. She hadn’t either. “I brought my copy to get signed. I’ve gotten really into signed first editions.”

I learned she was an editor, and she learned I was a novelist. By the time the doors opened, we had exchanged phone numbers and I had found my first Nashville friend: Joanna.

Over a shared love of books, we promptly created a joint social calendar of events we’d attend at Nashville’s Parnassus Bookstore, co-owned by author Ann Patchett: a monthly book club, book launches, and the store’s annual holiday book recommendation night, which would become one of my favorite holiday traditions.

To say these events were my lifeline during the early days in Nashville isn’t an understatement. I would help out with bedtime, get into my car, and drive across town from our airy townhouse that had begun to feel too spacious compared to our old, cozy apartment in New York, and the windows of Parnassus glowed warm, beckoning me.

I’d sit with my friend and cram in as much conversation about books as we could before the talks began, featuring writers like Louise Erdrich, Lily King, and Glennon Doyle.

Joanna told me to follow her one day. She wanted to show me a children’s book she thought my son might love. This was how I discovered the back of the store, a wonderland that kids can enter via a secret passageway. Behind the magic door is a train table, a reading nook, and thousands of books. By then, my son was approaching two and Parnassus became our destination when it was too cold to go to the playground in the afternoons. I’d strap him into his car seat and say, “Let’s go play trains.”

One afternoon, I had to sign some copies of my novel and was escorted to the staff area in the back to do so. My son came with me, and that happened to be where he met several of the store’s beloved dogs. From then on, he would sprint to the staff-only area in search of a dog to pet and I’d apologize, only to be assured that it was fine. Eventually, I stopped apologizing. Thus, he had free rein over the store, like the dogs he lived to chase and caress.

It is truly no wonder to me that a bookstore is where I felt most at home when I moved to a new city. Walking through its doors, I felt connected to other people and a much larger world.

Bookstores had been my refuge for decades, but this one was extra special.

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Mary Adkins is the author of the novels When You Read This (2019), Privilege (2020), and Palm Beach (2021). Her books have been published in 13 countries, and her essays and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, and more.