Rita Collins’s white Ford transit van has more than 100,000 miles on it, earned on drives through all but 10 of the United States.
Parked in front of The Grand Bakery in Dadeville, Ala., on a recent cloudy morning, she watched as a woman walked by, glanced at the van, did a double take, and hesitated.
“It’s a bookstore,” Collins said with her big, characteristic smile. “You can go inside.”
“Oh my Satan!” the woman exclaimed. “I’m a fool for books!”
Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore Textual Apothecary (its name painted on the sides and back of the van) is a vehicle for the cross-pollination of people and conversation. That’s what has evolved since Collins, now 74, began imagining her retirement dream more than a decade ago — not just selling high quality, inexpensive books, but setting her love of people, places and the wonders of a good read all in motion together.
Over the years Collins taught, opened a bakery/cafe and did social-services work for older adults. She left the United States after 9/11, and eventually taught English in Romania and the Czech Republic.
At 60, she said, she decided it was time to return and figure out her next steps. She took a course with the American Booksellers Association, seeking to learn what it would take to open a bookstore in Eureka, the small Montana town where she lived.
Ultimately she decided that Eureka didn’t have the adult population to support an independent bookstore. Nor did she have the desire to be tethered to a brick-and-mortar business six days a week, impinging on her love of travel.
Still determined to figure out how to share her passion for reading with those in far-flung places, perhaps without their own bookshops, she brainstormed with friends, googled traveling bookstores and got advice from the owner of the only one she could find, located in Swansea, Wales.
In 2013 her dream became a reality with a minimal investment: a van fitted with wooden shelves at a 15 degree angle so that the 700-book inventory stays in place while she motors around the United States. (Think a library bookmobile that goes well beyond a neighborhood or two.) She named it after Saint Rita, the patron saint of impossible causes. Large enough for two adults to peruse the varied selections at the same time, it has the magical, cozy feeling of a grown-up playhouse. It’s not uncommon to find children sprawled on the rug, deep in a picture book.
Each year Collins picks a region, plans a precise itinerary and sets up in all sorts of locations: farmers’ markets, festivals, brew pubs, museums and birthday parties, among them. She has been invited to speak to church congregations and book clubs.
While all the books are donated, Collins curates to be sure the ones on sale are in excellent condition. Hardcovers are $9 apiece, paperbacks $7, children’s books a dollar. There are sections for art and music, spirituality, travel, fiction, health, cooking, writing and more.
She is so often asked what her favorite book is — and has such difficulty answering — that there is a section titled “Favs” for her own ever-changing choices. During this year’s five-week swing through the South, it showcased books by Anne Michaels, Ann Patchett, Willa Cather, Atul Gawande, M.L Stedman and Anthony Doerr, among others.
During her journeys people frequently give her books, replenishing her stock, though the exchanges can go both ways.
At the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., Collins gifted a copy of Kristin Hannah’s “The Great Alone,” to Pat Ammons, the center’s director of communications, to thank her for having the bookstore there.
Ammons protested, then relented. “I will bring you books in exchange. Paper will rain down,” she warned.
Collins does not sleep in the bookstore, but stays mostly in people’s homes, with friends or friends of friends. Sometimes she is hosted by complete strangers.
Unlike other bookstores, hers offers the singular advantage of one-on-one service for each customer. And the books are just the starting point.
“My work is talking to people,” she says. “When you come, you’re probably going to have a conversation with me. It has allowed me to meet so many different kinds of people.”
A natural extrovert, Collins feels enriched by sharing stories of her adventures and learning about the lives of those in places unfamiliar to her. Once, in Colorado, a woman who had no money gave her two dozen eggs in exchange for some books. Recently, in Raleigh, N.C., a woman showed up with a gold-framed, 100-year-old lithograph of St. Rita and insisted she accept it as a gift.
Taking photos with Collins is a given, but sometimes the appreciation goes further.
“Thanks for bringing joy,” Shannon Milliman said after Collins stopped outside the Singin’ River Brewing Co. in Florence, Ala. Milliman, the town’s poet laureate, wrote a poem on the spot and recited it to those gathered outside the van, saying of Collins:
“She sells cookbooks, spirituality, Einstein, old Ulysses Grant. Like an old-timey medicine woman. She’s got what ails you.”
“I had a moment of nostalgia when you pulled up and opened your door,” Caty Stokes told Collins in the parking lot of the space center. “That’s what it felt like as a kid growing up in the country among cow fields when the bookmobile would come.”
While there are library bookmobiles and other bookstores housed in trucks — and more food trucks than ever — Collins believes hers is the rare traveling bookstore. She wishes there were more, pointing out that there is little overhead and a lot of freedom to open and close at will. When she’s not on the road the van is simply parked in her driveway.
“It’s just me deciding where I’m going to set up,” she said. “I can decide if the weather sucks I’m going to close early or, this is a great crowd, I’ll stay here longer.”
“There’s a big market out there,” she added. “I’m one person with one van and I can’t do the whole United States. I mean, I try, but I can’t do it all.”
Ruth Fremson is a Times photographer, based in Seattle, who covers stories nationally and internationally.
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