Photo: Mary Laura PhilpottIf you’ve ever rushed to Parnassus to grab the latest installment of the Divergent series on release day, lost track of time while perusing all the imaginative titles in Parnassus Books’ childrens' section (even if you don’t have a kid) or fulfilled your dream of getting your copy of This Savage Song signed by Victoria Schwab when the author stopped by the Green Hills shop in July, you have Stephanie Appell to thank.

The apple-cheeked book lover has been Parnassus’ manager of books for young readers since moving from Austin to Nashville in October of 2013. Not only does she buy all the new children’s and young adult books that fill the shop’s shelves, but she also arranges all the author appearances for the younger demographic (both at the shop and for local schools) and curates the YA subscription box ParnassusNext.

And when she found out she had breast cancer earlier this year, at the age of 29 — she got the “It’s cancer” call while at work, say says — her Parnassus family jumped into action.

Parnassus co-owner Ann Patchett and the shop’s director of events and marketing Niki Coffman reached out to their writer and illustrator friends, many of whom have been on the receiving end of Appell’s cheerleading, and asked them to decorate small white piggy banks, with the intention of auctioning off their creations to help Appell cover the impending pile of medical bills. They call the project Bank on Booksellers.

“It very quickly became something much bigger,” Appell tells the Scene from the quiet cookbook nook at Parnassus. “In particular, the kid lit and YA communities are very close, and so [authors] would hear about it from each other and reach out to us."

Photo: Heidi RossNow somewhere around 150 pigs sit on the shelf in one of the shop’s back offices. And while the names of those who’ve donated is impressive — Al Roker and his wife Deborah Roberts, Fault in Our Stars author John Green, the world's most famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Grammy winner Jason Isbell and his musician wife Amanda Shires, to name a few — even more staggering is the amount of imagination and effort the pigs, and Appell, have inspired. That delightful parade of pigs helped her push through the tough days that came with over four months of chemo and surgery in August.

“The creativity on display is really just stunning,” says Appell. “It was so fun to see what would come back on this blank piggy bank. When I wasn’t able to be at the store, Niki would text pictures of the pigs when they came in. When I was here, the mail would come and there’d be one or two or three boxes and we’d gather around to see what it was, what they had done.”

Children's author Bob Shea turned his pig into a bubblegum pink music box ballerina (with tutu!), mounting it on a spinning platform that plays the theme song from Swan Lake. And Newbery Honor winner CeCe Bell painted her pig bright green and gave it eyes on the ears, transforming the animal into a goofy grinning alien. Veronica Roth, author of the New York Times bestselling Divergent series, painted one of her pigs black and wildly splashed it with neon paint like a Jackson Pollack gone new wave.

Photo: Heidi RossThere are plenty of local names, too — Nashville and Friday Night Lights star Connie Britton's pig is sporting a gorgeous mane of red hair, because of course, and local author Jeff Zentner named his pig “Dolly Porkton,” decorating it to look like a Miss Piggy/Dolly Parton blonde with impressive, ahem, curves. And even local sculptor Alan Lequire, the artist behind Nashville's Athena Parthenos at the Parthenon and the Musica statue on Music Row, donated an oinker, which he transformed into a weighty miniature sculpture called "Boss Hog."

Appell, who's already back to working at Parnassus full-time, is starting to feel better than she has since she first started treatment — "Chemo has some neurological side effects that you don’t really hear about much," she says — but her fight isn't over yet. Next month she'll start radiation therapy, and she’ll also continue to get medication through the spring. “And then reconstruction is a journey,” she adds.

The money raised will not only help Appell cover the cost of missed wages and mounting medical bills, but some of the proceeds will also go to Book Industry Charitable Foundation, AKA Binc, a non-profit organization that financially assists booksellers in need.

“It’s amazing to me that there’s an organization out there specifically for people in the book industry. Nobody gets rich working in a bookstore,” Appell says with a laught. “You’re here because it’s what you love. So to have a an organization looking out for people who are facing unexpected medical expenses or a death in the family, to support them and in turn support that ripple effect that independent bookstores and independent business have in their community, that’s just awesome to me.”

The Bank on Booksellers pigs will be on display at Parnassus on Sunday, Sept. 25, at 5:30 p.m. The online auction will start that same night at 6:30 p.m. via BiddingOwl. While all the banks will be sent off to a new home after the auction closes on Friday, Sept. 30 at 8 p.m., one very special piece gets to stay with Appell.

“I was very scared about surgery — way more than I was scared about chemo,” she says. “I was particularly scared of the moment I would wake up. I didn’t know if I’d be in pain, I didn’t know how I’d feel, so I wanted to write something on my hand, like a message from myself. But I couldn’t figure out what to write. The morning of surgery, the surgeon comes in to draw on your boobs and I realized what I needed to write, which was sort of a mantra that Glennon Melton repeats in both of her books, which is ‘We can do hard things.’ "

"She was [coming to Parnassus] and we knew we were going to ask her to do a pig, so I thought maybe I could ask her to do a pig and write that on it and know this is a pig for me. So she did. So that’s my pig — the 'We can do hard things' pig."

The inspiring hand message worked. After waking up after surgery, Appell saw her hand — "The ink from the marker bled and my boyfriend said it looked so metal,” she says with a laugh — and she wasn't scared anymore.

“And I haven’t felt bad since," she says, smiling. “It’s not easy by any means — it’s been really interesting adapting to this new body and its new limitations — but, we can do hard things.”

Photo: Heidi Ross