To Beat The Devil
Words In Defiance Of A Post-Literate Society
The day my wife Marilyn and I first visited Sisters in August of 1992, I went out on a prowl through what was then just a few blocks of “downtown.” I stopped into The Palace (an ice cream parlor then), and asked if there was a bookstore in town. I had brought a Tom Clancy thriller along on the airplane ride for this scouting expedition that would ultimately lead to us moving to Sisters — but the vibe wasn’t right. So I was hunting.
The young lady behind the counter at The Palace broke the sad news that there was no bookstore in Sisters. I marched on — and lo, and behold, she was wrong. There, on Hood Avenue, stood Paulina Springs Books, then just a year old. I perused the shelves and walked out with Forrest Carter’s Watch For Me On The Mountain, a novel about Geronimo. The vibe I was looking for.
More than three decades later, Paulina Springs Books is still there — expanded and thriving. So is The Nugget Newspaper, where I would start freelancing in February of 1994.
We’re still here because Sisters remains a reading town. And in 2026, that is downright countercultural.
