Talbot County Stories Come Home to the Library

by Bill Peak

When I found out the library, as part of its 100^th anniversary, was going to publish a second volume of my Star Democrat columns, I was, of course, happy. But I was also a little scared.

When the library brought out the first set of my columns back in 2015, I was still working full-time. I oversaw the book’s publication from start to finish—compilation, design, print set-up, permissions, etc. We used a self-publishing firm out of North Carolina, and while their online platform was designed for dummies, they hadn’t taken into account the depths of dummyness I can descend to when placed in front of a computer screen. For me, the whole process was a bit of a nightmare.

Add to this concern that I was still in my early sixties when I put together that first volume, while I’m a seriously old guy now, and you can see why I didn’t look forward with unalloyed joy to starting out on such a journey again. But I was in for a pleasant surprise.

After moving to the Eastern Shore in 2013, Ron Sauder established Secant Publishing, LLC. For eleven years now, his firm has been a godsend for area writers who previously had gone unnoticed by the big publishing firms in New York. I, for instance, had long since given up hope of ever seeing the novel I’d worked on (for twenty years) in print, when Ron appeared angel-like to offer me a generous advance to publish what turned out to be—in my humble opinion—an astonishingly beautiful edition of The Oblate’s Confession. Mine was Secant’s first book, but it was far from the last. Since then Ron has published more than two dozen books by Delmarva authors.

Many of those books, including mine, were launched with readings and signings from the Talbot County Free Library’s main meeting room. To show his appreciation for all that the library has done for him and our area’s writing community, Ron now came forward with an offer to shepherd the publication of Adventures in Shelving, Vol. 2 through the self-publishing gauntlet free of charge. All I had to do was comb through the last ten years’ worth of columns to pick out the best for the book.

Which, as it turned out, was an interesting exercise. The book contains columns written between June of 2015 and May of 2025. As I was selecting these, I realized these two dates bookmark an interesting period in our nation’s history.

Several of the columns, for instance, consider what our community went through during the Covid pandemic, how we dealt with the limitations placed upon our commerce and our social lives, and how, despite these limitations, we managed to reach out and help one another. A few address the ever-widening political divide in our country at large, and how, once again, as a community, we have tried to rise above that division.

But most of the book’s columns simply celebrate our community library, its collection, and the wonderful people who use that collection every day.

In some ways this has not been an easy book for me to compile. In October I turned 74, just as the library turned 100. For a significant part of my life now, I have worked in Talbot County’s busy, thriving community library. Before that, I spent most of my life in semi-seclusion. It is the writer’s lot. A small room, a good typewriter, silence. These are all that a writer needs. For most writers, they’re all they really want. But going to work at the Talbot County Free Library thrust me into a new and different world, a world unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

Of course most of the time, most people visit a library for little more than diversion: to find a fun book to read, an entertaining film to watch, to play a game on one of the library computers. But sometimes it’s different. In a library you can meet people at their very best—as they set out to learn how to start a new business, to teach their child to read, to hope to discover the spiritual path that will change their lives. And then, sometimes, you meet them at their lowest ebb—as they search for a book that will show them how to deal with divorce, or illness, or death.

Which is to say I encountered the people of Talbot County at some of their most revealing and vulnerable moments. And I was always moved by what I observed, moved by the courage our people brought to such moments.

And now, after all these years, I was putting together this collection of library columns which, now retired and increasingly ancient, may well end up being my swan song. I will keep writing the columns as long as I can. I will keep visiting and helping out at the library as long as I can. But if this book should indeed turn out to be a sort of last testament, I want to make sure the people of Talbot County know how much I appreciate the gift they have given me by allowing me to serve them and learn from them in our library.

On Monday, December 1, at 6 p.m., the official launch of Adventures in Shelving, Vol. 2 will take place in our Easton library. There’ll be refreshments and hors d’oeuvres. Copies of the book will be on sale for $15 apiece, with all proceeds going to support the library and the services it provides our community. And I’ll read a few of my favorite columns and sign copies of the book.

I hope you’ll be there. I hope you’ll find stories in the book that ring a bell with you, echo what you know and love about life out here on the Eastern Shore. And whether you can make it to the launch or not, I thank you for this wonderful community we create and recreate together every day.