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“We joked it was like a contest,” Stephen Sparks says. “But when we won, we didn’t win money. We got debt. Still, this store was always a dream for us.”

Sparks, 40, is describing the improbable process by which he and his wife, Molly Parent, 31, ended up buying Point Reyes Books, a bookstore in Point Reyes Station.

Some bookstores sell books. Others do more. Under its former owners, Kate Levinson and Steve Costa, Point Reyes Books became the unofficial cultural capital of West Marin, with a rich schedule of readings and community events, and even its own literary magazine, the West Marin Review. It’s the type of institution you might expect to find in San Francisco or Berkeley, not in an isolated town of about 850 people.

“Steve was a community organizer,” Sparks says. “He and Kate turned the bookstore into the hub that it is. They referred to it as the community’s living room.”

When, in 2016, Levinson and Costa announced they wanted to sell the bookstore, local consternation was immense: Where would the town be without its living room? But, Sparks explains, the two worked to make sure Point Reyes Books’ spirit would continue. They vetted 30 prospective buyers, at last choosing Sparks and Parent, both veterans of San Francisco’s Green Apple Books.

Now, a year and a half later, Point Reyes Books is thriving, still sponsoring numerous readings, co-publishing the West Marin Review with the store’s former owners, and well stocked with best-sellers — but also with poetry and nature writing, two of Sparks’ particular passions. “Last year was the store’s best year ever, saleswise,” he says. “And this year is up over last year.”

What makes the bookstore work, Sparks thinks, is the special culture of West Marin, home to distinguished writers (among them, poets Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman) and to Point Reyes National Seashore, which draws travelers from around the world.

“When people come out to Point Reyes, they are living their best lives,” Sparks says. “They are thinking, I feel rejuvenated. They want to take something home with them — like a book they’ve been meaning to read.”

“I think that there’s a thirst for discovery and knowledge — an expansion of a worldview. That’s what a good bookstore does. You discover something you didn’t know you were looking for.”

— Peter Fish, travel@sfchronicle.com

Five great books about Marin

Extra Hidden Life,

Among the Days

By Brenda Hillman

Sparks praises this new collection by West Marin poet Hillman for its formal inventiveness. (“I think she’s ahead of her time, someone whose work is going to last.”) And, he adds, Hillman understands the local terrain. “She gets the fog, she knows the landscape. It resonates if you’ve spent any time out here.” Among his favorites is “Poem for a National Seashore,” written about Point Reyes for the centennial of the National Park Service .

Journey to

Mount Tamalpais

By Etel Adnan

Adnan is a Lebanese American poet — “very avant-garde,” Sparks says — who for many years split her time between Paris and Marin. “She lived in the shadow of Mount Tam, she engaged with it a lot,” he says. This slim book is “just amazing,” with Adnan honoring Marin’s iconic mountain in her prose and in her illustrations, “gorgeous, calligraphy-like outlines of Tam.”

The Boatbuilder

By Daniel Gumbiner

Gumbiner, a veteran of McSweeney’s and the Believer, grew up in Marin and has set his first novel “in a fictional Northern California town called Talinas,” says Sparks. “It’s about someone escaping the city and dealing with addiction problems, who ends up apprenticing for a boat builder. The book has the rough edges and gruffness you can see in West Marin, but also that feeling of deep local connection and protectiveness for the land.”

Chief Marin:

Leader, Rebel and Legend

By Betty Goerke

This Heyday biography is about 19th century Coast Miwok leader Chief Marin, says Sparks. “He was a kind of revolutionary guy, who stood his ground and who fought to retain the cultural practices of the Miwok people. In the last few years, there’s been a real renewed focus on the indigenous history of West Marin, which is important.”

The Oyster War, The True Story

of a Small Farm, Big Politics,

and the Future of Wilderness in America

By Summer Brennan