Cheyenne, Wyoming is a sleepy town where your mind’s eye can see the tumbleweed roll down the streets flanked by empty buildings from happier times. The city centre is fully reminiscent of its Wild West origins with a Wrangler department store on one of the corners of the ‘main’ square. We chanced upon the town by accident. While living in Denver, Colorado we wanted to explore and visit as many states of the union as possible. Cheyenne, being the capital of Wyoming and conveniently only 2 hours’ drive away, presented an obvious choice. And so we went. Once, twice, thrice… We discovered a little gem, not to everyone’s taste but it certainly suited us. We even spent one Christmas there and that is where my story begins.

There is a second-hand bookshop called Phoenix Books just opposite a lovely coffee shop called Paramount and both places became our regular stops when in town. Surprisingly, the bookshop was open every day over Christmas and we visited and shopped in it every day of our stay. Checking my booklist now, I bought 34 books there altogether. During the Christmas stay I discovered a collection of books from The Heritage Club published by The Heritage Press, New York. Wikipedia tells me that:

In 1929, George Macy founded the Limited Editions Club and began publishing illustrated books in limited numbers (usually 1500 copies) for subscription members. In 1935 Macy founded the Heritage Club, which together with the Heritage Press, created and distributed more affordable and unlimited reprints of the great books previously published by The Limited Editions Club.

The editions were beautiful, bound in canvas with golden or silver lettering and leather details. Each book in its own cardboard sleeve with a dedicated newsletter insert. I have never seen anything like it available and affordable to buy and not crumbling under the touch. I immediately picked up John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress with illustrations by William Blake. Six US dollars for such a jewel? It was certainly coming home with me… I picked up one or two more, on top of the ‘ordinary’ paperbacks and when Christmas was over we went back home.

On the drive home I could not stop thinking about the books I had left behind. I knew we were going to move to Europe in a couple of years and our book collection was already rather extensive and so I tried to ‘rationalise’. What a futile idea that is? Well, by the time we got home I knew I could not leave those books there. I had to rescue them and offer them a good home. There was no self-interest involved at all, it was all for the greater good of those books only, of course.

So, to maintain some sort of a rationale behind my actions, I decided I would only take ten more books and I emailed the bookshop owner asking him for a list. I also knew, at that point that there were two books I wanted to give as presents – Dostoevsky’s The Gambler and A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. And so I pick eight more and we drove to collect them the following weekend. They travelled across the Atlantic ocean on their own with the rest of our possessions and were reunited with us in our new London home.

I am still in awe, looking at our bookshelves and fingering the spines, at how much beauty there is in books. How much hope and solace they bring me. I get excited when I think of the further 20 boxes of books I still have in a storage in Prague. I have always referred to them as “my only valuable possessions” and now is the time to bring them home to me.