For the last decade, I have been stopping by once a week to the volunteer-run Gabriel’s Bookstore, inside the former school adjacent to St. Michael’s Catholic Parish. According to the church and volunteers at the bookstore, its Lakeside Professional Building is to be demolished , which would displace or close Gabriel’s.
When that happens, the demise of the used-book store would be a loss for the community, especially Duluth’s Christian communities.
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A loss for families with children: One of the strongest visitor demographics for Gabriel’s is families. Children visiting the shop can have five books free. I have seen so many kids pick out one book with enthusiasm, only for the staff to tell them to pick four more. It’s a joy.
A loss for teachers: While Barnes and Noble offers educators a modest discount, building a library for a classroom is difficult and expensive. The volunteers at Gabriel’s have built connections with local schools and local teachers. Teachers who visit Gabriel’s can leave with a bag of books for their students.
The Catholic Church, among all Christian denominations, has the strongest historical commitment to literacy and education. I am a successful professor today because of the eight years of Jesuit education I received when I was younger. To lose Gabriel’s would mean losing one of the ways that hundreds of books get into the hands of children every year.
Outside of children, Gabriel’s serves an incredible mission for other populations of adults.
Thus, losing Gabriel’s would be a loss for prisoners: Connections with prison libraries have seen dictionaries and other books flow from Gabriel’s into the hands of the incarcerated, for free.
A loss for grieving families: I have literally watched dozens of families leave hundreds of books at Gabriel’s, not knowing where else to take their libraries when their parents die. It’s amazing to see, because the volunteers do more than take the books that otherwise would die in the recycling bin at Savers. They take the stories from the grieving children. They appreciate, with gentle love, the lifetime given to collecting all of those Nancy Drew books or all of those Swedish cookbooks. Gabriel’s has been an important part of the grieving process for many.
A loss for those who seek God: It’s no surprise that Gabriel’s has an extensive religion section. No store in the region, not the big-box retailer at the mall nor the artsy shop on the west side, has the selection that Gabriel’s has for the reader seeking God. From the free Bibles and Missals near the entrance to the books on meditation and prayer to the books, specifically, on Catholicism to the religious fiction, biography, and more, Gabriel’s is the place readers can come to reconnect with God.
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I have purchased amazing art books at Gabriel’s, hilarious joke books, and enough poetry to give hundreds of books to my students. But I am most grateful for the shelf of Henri Nouwen that I snagged from Gabriel’s, the shelf of Thomas Merton, whose works set my heart and my mind afire.
If we lose Gabriel’s, we will lose so much.
Duluth is a national center for Catholic education. For example, Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcasts have been downloaded a million times. Gabriel’s is a key part of education in our community. It’s a place where people come to find cheap books. They leave being served by the Catholic Church, reconnected to learning, to literacy, to classic and pulpy literature, and, maybe, if they seek it, to God.
I am hopeful the leadership of St. Michael’s and the Duluth diocese has a plan for Gabriel’s when the building is lost. If leaders do not, if we are to lose this unique mission, I am hopeful the hearty and hardy volunteers of Gabriel’s — and their 50,000 books — will be picked up by another organization in the region.
David Beard is a professor of rhetoric in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
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