By Maria Consbruck, Reporter
A local bookstore, The Next Chapter Books and Gifts, is continuing a family legacy after relocating from Hastings, Neb.
Before it was known as The Next Chapter, this family bookstore was called Prairie Books and Gifts, which opened in 1976. It took residence for 43 years in Hastings, Neb., about a two-and-a-half-hour drive away from Omaha. It was owned by the Shelly Mutum’s parents, Jane and Bernie Tushaus.
Mutum is the owner of The Next Chapter, which is now located in Omaha.
“I always wanted the store,” Shelly said. “I loved it and it was all I ever wanted.”
Once Prairie Books and Gifts closed their doors in the summer of 2019, Shelly took that opportunity. After discussing with her mother, they agreed to relocate the store to Omaha.
Mutum said the bookstore was too important to have its story end; many family memories surrounded it and when Shelly was a kid, she grew up living in the store.
“Every day I was there,” said Mutum. “I was in the backroom playing store, or I was able to go upfront, help my parents, or put books away.”
There are even pictures of her in the back of the store in a box as a little kid. She adored everything about the bookstore, from the atmosphere to the books to the people.
“I love reading. I love books, I love just the experience of being in a bookstore,” Mutum explained. “I mean there’s nothing like it. Just being surrounded by that is pretty amazing.”
When she was deciding what to call her bookstore, she thought of keeping Prairie Books and Gifts, but seeing as they closed the store, she decided to call it something else. She said she wanted to make the store her own and found it fitting since the bookstore would be entering its next chapter.
So, she went with it, and it’s the perfect name for the continuation of what her parents started.
The Next Chapter Books and Gifts has been open since October 2019. She said the years have flown by while also feeling long, as if she’s living her very own fairytale. Mutum said with the new location being next to a coffee shop and hotel, it’s the perfect place for her bookstore to call home.
This is the only branch of The Next chapter. For Mutum, it is the beginning of writing her own story as she partakes in this journey. As J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings said,
“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”
And Shelly Mutum is doing just that.
