Review of The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks. By Shauna Robinson. Naperville, IL.: Sourcebooks Landmark, November 2022. 330 pp. Softcover. $16.99 ISBN-9781728246444

Reviewed by Alyssa Noch, Master of Arts in Public History, Specialization in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s History from Wayne State University [PDF Full Text]

This review contains spoilers for The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks.

The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson was among my top five reads in 2024. Why does this book stick with me? The only answer I can come up with is that I felt seen as someone in the field of archiving and collections management. Even though the book does not focus on an archives or a museum, its exploration of power dynamics and the change younger generations bring to handling history spoke to me on a personal level.

The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks is marketed as a rom-com, though I would argue that the book’s main focus is power dynamics, not romantic comedy. Maggie Banks, a Black woman in her late twenties, moves from San Francisco to the fictional, small town of Bell River, Maryland, to assist her friend Rochelle Howard by running her bookshop, Cobblestone Books, for a few months. Maggie quickly finds herself grappling with the restrictive rules of Bell Society (BS), the town’s historical society and business association, which includes restricting Cobblestone Books to only selling books published before 1968. The acronym of BS seems intentional on the author’s part as most historical societies’ acronyms include an H for Historical—so BS should really be BHS. The head of BS is Ralph Bell, who is the deceased author Edward Bell’s grandson, and BS’s president and sole board member (which is not how real historical societies or business associations typically are structured). Ralph’s primary rule enforcer is Malcolm, Maggie’s love interest, who is also Black. To keep her friend’s store from going under, Maggie begins to run other book-related events and sell modern books in secret. As she introduces modernity to a town stuck in the past and satisfies her own mounting curiosity of the secret history of Edward Bell, Maggie revitalizes Bell River by uncovering Bell’s hidden history of plagiarism while staying true to herself.

The book’s relevancy to archiving can be seen in the town itself. Bell River celebrates the accomplishments of a dead, white male author (Edward Bell) who, if he were real, would have undoubtedly been part of the famously white, male literary canon that has dominated much of the Western world until relatively recently. Almost everything in the small town is a reference to Bell. Ralph has practically bullied every business in town to cater to his ancestor’s legacy in the name of pride and supposed profit, as the town is struggling to keep Bell-centered tourism lucrative. Ralph’s efforts include suppressing efforts to dig into Edward Bell’s history of racism and his secret mistress, Louise Wood. The book’s setup is reminiscent of the TV show Rutherford Falls (2021–22), with the person the town is named after at the center of a historical controversy, though with a very different tone and type of history being explored.[1] The trope of history’s victors having their real stories exposed and more fully examined decades or even centuries later is not new. But Robinson’s exploration of a historical society, one of the institutions that may uphold controversial histories, feels fresh and hits closer to home for me than some other media narratives in terms of power dynamics, especially with my personal experience with local historical societies.

As an archivist at a historical society, you are beholden to institutional stakeholders, which often include a historical committee or board. The size of an individual stakeholder’s power varies from institution to institution. Some stakeholders even have varying footholds in several institutions. For example, some historical societies are linked to libraries and townships, their governance securely intertwined with these other larger, broader institutions. While historical societies can be more independent from stakeholders and even so large that they influence other institutions, most historical societies are helpless due to funding or name recognition and must go along with what a specific stakeholder wants to present as objective history. 

Bell River is in the latter category, with stores like Cobblestone Books beholden to BS because it supports the town’s tourism business. The bookstore, for example, houses Edward Bell’s writing desk and books as a tourist attraction. When Maggie breaks BS’s rules by not immediately shutting down a customer’s speculation regarding Edward’s cloudy history with his mistress, BS swiftly removes Bell’s items from the store. This eliminates the store’s ability to market itself as a tourist attraction and puts the store—and, by proxy, Rochelle’s livelihood—in jeopardy.

The Banned Bookshop’s discussion about which books should be sold and which narratives should be told will resonate with many archivists, collections managers, and librarians who are beholden to certain board members for critical decisions about exhibit displays, accessioning, deaccessioning, and even accessibility. In my experience, many in the historical and archiving fields are resistant to change, and it is often younger generations who advocate for the necessity of change, like Maggie and Malcolm do in Bell River. A 2019 survey published in the Society of American Archivists’ Archival Outlook supports this, finding that “Many archivists new to their organization recalled being told by senior archivists some version of ‘that is the way things have always been done’,” demonstrating older peers’ unwillingness to change.[2] Maggie and Malcolm encounter this mindset from many in the town, especially Ralph, due to what the 2019 survey authors articulate is “a fear of losing power and privilege.”[3] With rumors of his grandfather’s racist remarks and possible mistress circulating, it is clear why Ralph hides his grandfather’s personal letters from the public. As one character notes, “If there’s one thing Ralph loves, it’s power” (p. 178), and here are two, young, Black lovers challenging that white, male legacy.

However, Maggie is of the mindset that Ralph’s problem lies more in his unwillingness to listen to those around him and change how he is running BS rather than his love of power. The 2019 survey states “that aversion to change affects willingness to collaborate and impedes advancement in social justice, diversity, and equity work.” The 2019 survey authors note how older generations’ “Resistance . . . can permeate into other aspects of the workplace environment,”[4] which is nowhere clearer than the bookstore’s rules of only selling literary classics to the rest of the town. Maggie’s status as an outsider to the field of history, being neither someone experienced in museum work nor someone familiar with archiving, results in her wanting to implement the most straightforward approach to solving this issue, even if it is illegal. She violates BS’s privacy and general access policies by stealing Malcolm’s keycard to gain access to Ralph’s hidden archival collection in his office, which results in Malcolm getting fired (a very realistic consequence!). But her finding Edward’s unaltered correspondence provides evidential value, defined as “the quality or authenticity of a record to provide legal or historical proof or adequate evidence,”[5] that Edward not only had a mistress, Louise Wood, but that Louise also wrote his most famous and popular work, The First Dollar. Maggie then gives this information to potential investors for an Edward Bell Writers Retreat in the town, even though most townspeople are against it because they still believe their town’s tourism is reliant upon Edward’s good name. Maggie continues to find more definitive evidence in the form of the original manuscript of The First Dollar and further correspondence between Edward and Louise, but her illegal actions cannot be taken back.

Juxtaposing Maggie, the character of Malcolm is set in the position of an archivist, working more directly for BS. His actions to implement change are markedly different from Maggie’s, with him telling her:

I think there’s room for change. We should be more honest about who Edward Bell was instead of glossing over the stuff we don’t like. . . . Tourists don’t come to Bell River because they worship him; they come because they like his books and they want to learn more about him. The good and the bad… If I move up in the Bell Society, maybe I could convince Ralph to let people see a more nuanced side of Edward Bell (p. 130).

Malcolm wants to change the institution from within and, unlike Maggie, his livelihood as well as his integrity in the historical field is at stake. The fallout from Maggie’s disclosure of the truth about Edward Bell becomes a sticking point for the couple.

Surprisingly, within this discourse for change on what is or is not the most appropriate actions—ethically, morally, and legally—Ralph Bell himself turns out to be an arbiter of change. As the sole remaining descendant of Edward Bell, Ralph tells Maggie how it was his family’s policy to burn anything of his grandfather’s in the archives that would negatively affect his character. Yet, when he found his grandfather’s “letters from Louise, hidden in a book,” he says, “I knew I should burn them, but . . . I couldn’t” (p. 289). Ralph, as the youngest of his family’s generation, unwittingly started the change that Maggie pursued. He broke the cycle, the tradition, with this new history he unearthed. It allowed Maggie, around twenty years Ralph’s junior, to come along and see that while no one might “come to a museum about an author who stole the book [Bell]’s famous for” (p. 239), “they will,” Maggie says, “if the museum’s about who he stole it from” (p. 240). She sees the power of a more diverse women’s history the town should celebrate as well as the potential for businesses to diversify if BS eases restrictions, such as allowing Cobblestone Books to sell books published after 1968.

In short, this book is an interesting window into how historical societies and other historical institutions navigate power dynamics by suppressing or celebrating certain items within their archival holdings, and how younger, more diverse generations of history tellers hold the power for change, even in seemingly small and innocuous ways (like choosing not to deaccession—never burn!—certain letters in a collection). I highly recommend The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks to anyone in the history field, especially if you are newer to the field and looking to feel seen; I know I sure did.

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[1] Sierra Teller Ornelas, Rebecca Asher, Tazbah Rose Chavez, Tracey Deer, Sydney Freeland, Eric Kissack, Claire Scanlon, Lawrence Sher, Brennan Shroff, and Craig Zisk, Rutherford Falls,Peacock, 2021–22.

[2] David Benjamin, Alison Clemens, Elena Colón-Marrero, Rosemary Pleva Flynn, Mary Manning, Jessica C. Neal, Kelly Revak, Jill Severn, Helen Wong Smith, and Linda A. Whitaker, “Assessing Power Dynamics in Multigenerational Archives,” Archival Outlook (January/February 2021), 13, https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=690860&p=15&view=issueViewer.

[3] Benjamin et al., “Assessing Power,” 13, 16.

[4] Benjamin et al., “Assessing Power,” 17.

[5] “Evidential Value,” Dictionary of Archives Terminology, Society of American Archivists, accessed February 23, 2025, https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/evidential-value.html.