Parnassus on Wheels
1917
The story of what happens when a tired spinster decides she'd rather sell books than milk cows. Helen McGill has spent years enabling her brother Andrew's literary ambitions, sacrificing her own life to his success. Then Roger Mifflin arrives with his traveling book wagon, Parnassus, and Helen makes an impulsive choice that will change everything. She buys the wagon and hits the New England roads, becoming a bookseller with a mission: to bring the right book to the right person at the right moment. What follows is part picaresque adventure, part love letter to literature, and part story of a woman finding herself. Morley writes with infectious enthusiasm about books and the people who love them, while Helen's journey from self-effacing sister to confident businesswoman feels genuinely revolutionary. It's funny, warm, and believes absolutely in the transformative power of a good story.
Editions
X-Ray
“When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue”
— Christopher Morley
“The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.””
— Christopher Morley
“There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. A man should be learning as he goes; and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he should be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable.””
— Christopher Morley
“I think reading a good book makes one modest. When you see the marvelous insight into human nature which a truly great book shows, it is bound to make you feel small--like looking at the Big Dipper on a clear night, or seeing the winter sunrise when you go out to collect the morning eggs. And anything that makes you feel small is mighty good for you.””
— Christopher Morley
“Summer was over, and we were no longer young, but there were great things before us.””
— Christopher Morley
“A good book ought to have something simple about it. And, like Eve, it ought to come from somewhere near the third rib: there ought to be a heart beating in it. A story that's all forehead doesn't amount to much.””
— Christopher Morley
“What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content”
— Christopher Morley
“Calling us men doesn't make us men. No creature on earth has a right to think himself a human being if he doesn't know at least one good book.””
— Christopher Morley
“Oh, silly woman! Leave your stove, your pots and pans and chores, even if only for one day! Come out and see the sun in the sky and the river in the distance!””
— Christopher Morley
