It could be said that the story of Millrace Books started 83 years ago when a mother read to her baby girl. The mother had grown up with a father who loved literature and held literary salons in his home. No wonder the little girl's favorite book was Pinocchio. Whenever the family moved to a new town, the mother would take the little girl to the local library. When a friendly librarian gave her a guided tour through the stacks, she was awed and 'a seed was planted' by her mother who suggested that perhaps she would like to be a librarian someday. Many years later, after graduating with a BS degree and working in research laboratories, she remembered her mother's words and enrolled in a graduate school of library science. Spending hours in a large public library researching and writing papers on children's literature and philosophy, she had another thought. Instead of being a librarian, what fun it would be to run a bookstore someday.

Dreams can become realities! In 1972, Jan Owens became a co-owner of Millrace Books in Farmington, Connecticut. Located in the historic Grist Mill on the Farmington River, its small size is made gloriously large by a magnificent view of the Farmington River with the sparkling race of the waterfall. When Jan later became the sole owner of Millrace Books, she proclaimed her belief 'that small is beautiful,' bringing many national and local authors to share their talents and be awed and inspired by the bookstore's beautiful setting. She loved it when author William Least Heat Moon visited and said, "Promise to be here when I come back."

Following Jan's philosophy of 'using what you have,' Millrace Books made national news in 1980 when it staged a tableau on the riverbank of the characters from The Wind in The Willows -- Ratty, Mole, Badger & Toad, and again in 2001 when the Grist Mill Players presented "The River Bank," a one-act play based on the book's first chapter.

As the longest resident of Farmington's historic Grist Mill, Jan was asked by the Farmington Historical Society to write Millrace Books' story within the history of the mill and so she wrote Light On The River and ended it with the words of Ratty to Mole, "Mole, there is nothing - nothing so worth while as simply messing about by a river."

Today, 37 years later, Millrace Books - under the graceful guidance of its beloved owner Jan Owens - still stands beautifully by the Farmington River, inspiring all of us to keep on believing in the magic of reading and the enchanting world of books.