Spotlight on Bookstores: Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, Connecticut

Today’s Spotlight on Bookstores is brought to us by Lauren Lipton, author of Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (review here) and It’s About Your Husband.  She lives in New York City and spends weekends two hours away in the home her family calls “The Great Big Hole in Connecticut We Throw Money Into.”  Here she shares a bit about a special place she can visit on those weekends, enjoying the trifecta of books, homespun yarn, and fresh local produce.

The most appealing bookstore I know is not a store in the traditional sense, with four walls and a ceiling and comfortable chairs for reading.  Well, to be accurate, the Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, Connecticut, does have all those things.  It also has a lovely owner, Fran Keilty, who is particularly kind to local writers — who include Frank McCourt, Kevin Phillips, Francine Du Plessix Gray and, now, me (though I can guarantee this is the only time you’ll see my name alongside those luminaries’).  It also sells yarn from nearby Maple Spring Farm, which the Keiltys happen to own.  One time I went in and was seduced not by a book, but an enormous skein of creamy wool that I intend someday to turn into something, once I am a good enough knitter to justify its use.  Right now I am happy just to own it.

The Hickory Stick is an appealing place all year round, but my favorite time to browse is in the summer, when staff members pack up a selection of books and drive a few miles up the road to a local farmers’ market, where they set up shop under a bright white open-air tent.

The Litchfield Hills Farm-Fresh Market is one of my favorite Connecticut destinations.  It’s hard not to love any farmer’s market in the summer, and this one has the requisite beautiful vegetables — purple-tinged bunches of kale, lettuces like lush flower bouquets, old-fashioned cardboard baskets of silver-dusted blueberries.  Over the past two seasons it has evolved, and now you can find other delights, including brightly woven market baskets or the occasional CD from an independent musician.  There’s a couple that makes goat-milk soap, and they bring their wares, plus a pair of baby goats.  And then, last summer, the Hickory Stick Bookshop showed up, and now you can buy a cookbook to show you a new way to prepare those heirloom tomatoes, or a children’s book, or any one of a number of gems.

This year, the Litchfield Hills Farm-Fresh Market will run every Saturday from June 13 (ironically, I’ll be signing books at the actual Hickory Stick in Washington Depot that afternoon) through October in the town of Litchfield, Connecticut.  If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello to the ladies of the Hickory Stick Bookshop.  And don’t forget to pet the goats.