Erica Eisdorfer, born in Durham, North Carolina, was the first of the three children born to her parents, who had moved down south from the great city of New York and lived for some years in culture shock. The family rented a wonderful house edged by forest and she and her two younger brothers spent a great deal of time playing in the trees where she, due to her birth order and general bossiness, was constantly the admiral of the ship, the mayor of the town, the principal of the school. This sort of innocent play lasted only until her brothers, in what must have been a co-epiphany, realized that they didn’t have to take it anymore and went off by themselves to play with their trucks, leaving her alone forever. This is when she discovered reading.

After having graduated from Duke University, she considered, then rejected the idea of further schooling and went to work at the Bull’s Head Bookshop, where she has found gainful employment for the last thirty years as buyer and manager.

One of the great stories of her life reads as follows:

In 1992, her family converged upon Bloomington, Indiana where her brother lay dying of AIDS. There, they felt first-hand the kindnesses of those who had helped Marco in his illness: Ruth, who brought him dinner; Doreen, who did his laundry; Dave, who took care of his recycling and who, a half-hour after Marco’s death, rushed over with a piece of music Marc had written in earlier better days and played it for the family, on the recorder, the sheet music resting on Marc’s legs.

Back in Chapel Hill, Eisdorfer wrote thank you’s to Marc’s friends: thanks for taking care of him, thanks for watching over him. To Dave, the musician, she wrote, “Thanks for doing his recycling. Yours, Erica Eisdorfer. PS. Will you marry me?”

He wrote back. She wrote back. He wrote again. So did she. By the time they were through writing they had amassed fifteen pounds of letters.

One day she received a special letter. “I have just called in sick,” wrote Dave, “so that I could stay home and finish one of the best books I have ever read. It is called Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All and it is by the author Allan Gurganus. If you don’t have a copy, let me know and I will send you one.”

At that time, not only did Erica Eisdorfer live across the street from Allan Gurganus, but, in addition, she worked for him. When she received the letter, she galloped down the road and burst into Allan’s house. “Look at this,” she said, thrusting the letter into his face. Gurganus sat, read the letter carefully, looked over the tops of his glasses at her and said, “you have my blessing.”

Fifteen years later, she and Dave are married and live with their two daughters and a variety of animal life in Carrboro, North Carolina, often referred to as “the Paris of the Piedmont.”

It really is true. There are stories everywhere. We write fiction and we read it in order to translate these stories into bundles that we can manage ourselves, that we can embrace and lift up and carry with us. As Susan Rose might have said, “when the babe will but squall in its cradle and sleep only upon your arm, then a story’s a treat to have for the company of it in the long dark night.”