Let’s try a riddle. Where’s the one place to go if you want to find yourself or lose yourself? Answer: Inside the pages of a book.

Independent bookstores point readers in the right direction every day. In Lake Geneva that’s Lakeside Books, 830 Main St., inside The Market shops downtown. Owner Alicia Boemi showed us around. She and her husband Jeff Daniel – Alicia describes herself as the creative force, her husband as the numbers cruncher – opened the store October 2. She’s also a published children’s author. He works in the tech world.

Alicia traces both her writing and the bookstore initiative to her love for the lake, which began by spending summers here as a child. “I like to say I grew up in both places because my best memories and some of my best friends were here,” she told us. “We would move up here for the summer. We’d pack our bags, had our friends up here. Unfortunately, I had to go back to school in Illinois. I always knew I wanted to come back here as an adult and raise my kids the way I had been raised.”

The couple checked that box by moving to the area with their two daughters, Annika and Talise (a name, she said, they found means “beautiful water”). The human pack included five dogs. Alicia is a serious animal rescue advocate, with the support of her husband. The “queen of the pack” was a labradoodle named Izzy.

“I was heavily involved in animal rescue in Illinois, getting dogs from Chicago Animal Control,” she said. “The last two that are left of our five are both three-legged dogs, true mutts. My heart bled for them, when I saw these innocent little puppies with a leg dangling off that needed to be removed. There are horrible things you see in animal rescue. That’s how we wound up with five dogs at one point.”

Izzy crossed the rainbow bridge in 2023, but not before becoming the inspiration for Alicia’s children’s book series called The Lake Dog Adventures. Two of the planned three books – featuring storylines and illustrations based around Geneva Lake – are published and available at the bookstore. A spin-off series also is in the works. Alicia explained how it began, oddly enough, with “writer’s block” as she tried to get going toward becoming a children’s author.

“I was on a boat ride up here with my dog Izzy,” she told us. “The (U.S.) Mailboat drove by and I thought if this dog could have any job in the world I’ll bet she would be a mail jumper. She’s so friendly, she loves the water, she has so much fun jumping in and out of the water and retrieving balls and sticks. It just clicked. The Mail Boat Dog. That’s the book I’m going to write.”

The second book in the series is The Safety Patrol Dog, published two months ago. Alicia is working on book three, juggling the writing with the responsibilities as owner of a brand-new bookstore. She sees it all as part of Izzy’s legacy. “She’s definitely with me,” Alicia says, visibly moved. “I have a necklace with her fur in it that I wear every single day. I like to think that she’s along for the journey even though she’s not physically here.”

Like the old song about the leg bone connected to the hip bone, one thing does lead to another. What’s a book without a bookstore? “We really felt like there needed to be a true bookstore in Lake Geneva. Independent bookstores are making a comeback,” she said.

Wait a minute. Today’s economy is not kind to brick-and-mortar stores. Even giant booksellers like Barnes and Noble have closed dozens of shops.

Alicia and Jeff decided to test the water by starting out with a mobile unit. They set up a trailer and took it to various events to gauge consumer interest. Enough customers asked about the possibilities for a store to encourage them to seek retail space.

“I’m not going to lie. It’s tough. It’s slim margins,” she said. “The publishing world, the pricing, is not the best in the world. Yet indie bookstores are making a comeback.”

And young people – particularly women – are leading the way. Most of Alicia’s customers are female. They love browsing books. They love her series of author visits. They love her special events, like Book Bedazzling Parties.

Right. We didn’t know what that was either.

“You buy a book. You sit down with some wine and you take little sparkly beads and you bedazzle the title. You’re literally putting sparkly beads on the title and making it shimmer,” she explained.

Lakeside Books is small but carries a surprisingly broad selection. If you don’t see what you want it can be ordered and delivered within a day or two. “We have a very curated collection of books. You’re not going to find every book under the sun but we can order you any book you want,” Alicia said. “There’s something about going into the bookstore, feeling the books. It smells like books in there.”

Lakeside Books is open seven days a week from 10 to 5. When winter arrives in earnest the shop will be closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. For more information visit the website (lakesidebookslg.com).

By the way, John Grisham’s wildly popular novel The Widow went home with Steph. So did The Mail Boat Dog for grandson Jack and granddaughter Khloe.