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LYNETTE NYMAN: There is no obvious sign at Birchbark Books indicating who owns the store, though there are subtle hints that a particular vision is at work. Take the loft made of birch trees or the music filling the air.

[SINGING]

Then there are the employee book reviews peppered throughout the store, some are by author and now bookstore owner Louise Erdrich who says there are many reasons why she's adding retail to her repertoire, starting with her love for putting a good book into someone's hands.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Some of my favorite reads are out on the shelves and on the table. And every time I have the experience of staying up and not being able to stop reading, now I've been doing this for the past year, collecting these in my thoughts, I can order the books and tell people about them. And that's a huge pleasure for me.

LYNETTE NYMAN: Erdrich's own titles are for sale too, not only because they're her books, but they're books by and about Native Americans. It's all a part of the store's focus of offering a broad selection of Indian authors and subjects, alongside some mainstream bestsellers. So here, Nabokov's Lolita rests a few inches from an anthology of Native Women's poetry, but all of the artwork for sale, like the quill baskets, were made by Native Americans. That's because Erdrich wants to bring native artists to a wider audience.

LOUISE ERDRICH: We're developing a place for those kinds of arts. And I love doing that and working with the individual artists. That's part of what I've always dreamed of doing. It's hard to keep myself in my own writing world sometimes because this is it's such a pleasure to come over here.

LYNETTE NYMAN: Nearby residents are discovering the new store. When visiting, they're likely to meet store manager Ray Burnes, a longtime Erdrich family friend and a native of the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in Wisconsin.

RAY BURNES: As we've been here now for over a month, we've gotten more and more people who do just feel comfortable coming in, sitting down, not necessarily picking a book, not necessarily buying, anything but feeling comfortable just being here. And that was our goal. So we're really happy by seeing more and more people doing that.

LYNETTE NYMAN: The Kenwood spot might mean the store has a chance of succeeding in the very precarious world of independent bookselling. The hottest items so far are Harry Potter books and dried herbs. Erdrich says she's not in it for the money, even if the store does well someday. For example, herb sell profits will go to recovery programs for Native women and men. supporting native land recovery and language preservation is a priority too. The shop is a part of what Erdrich calls the Birchbark project.

LOUISE ERDRICH: We hope to be able to reach out to schools in the area and be a place for children to come, and have some experience of Native children's literature for teachers and educators, for Native children to come and feel good about where they're from and who they are.

[SINGING AND PERCUSSIONS]

LYNETTE NYMAN: A woman walks through the door and exclaims, oh, what a cute store. These are words Erdrich says she loves to hear. And why not? Since ultimately the store expresses her own creative spirit.

LOUISE ERDRICH: It's a personal way for me to give something back to readers, in addition to whatever I write.

LYNETTE NYMAN: I'm Lynette Nyman, Minnesota Public Radio.

[TRIBAL SINGING]