Dream Book

 The title of Patricia Johnston's memoir is Pie in the Sky, and there's no apparent irony in the name. A kind of charmed optimism genuinely seems to be the way Johnston, publisher of the Afton Historical Society Press, looks at the world and her place in it. This is a woman, after all, who wrote a high school term paper on the 1955 World Series, received a C for her efforts, and then salved her disappointment by sending it off to Brooklyn Dodgers manager Walter Alston, who returned it to her autographed by 23 members of his World Championship team. Johnston still has that keepsake (in its original envelope), and she was obviously undaunted by the less than charitable evaluation of her work by that high school English teacher.

You can find Johnston's more recent--though perhaps equally improbable--labors of love displayed in an old restored bank building on the main street of Afton, a tiny community about a half hour east of the Twin Cities. The space functions as a storefront, and though the doors are locked most days, if someone should happen to stop by and knock, he's welcome to come inside and browse or shop to his heart's content.

The books that are available at the company's tidy headquarters and at stray bookstores around the country are impossibly lavish and attractive productions--titles on Minnesota and regional artists, architects, and history, elaborately designed and profligately illustrated with photographs and artwork. Minuscule local historical presses, here and elsewhere, are a dime a dozen, and generally conjure up images of homely volumes that appear to have been crafted by a person who never updated past Photoshop 1.0, and is a little iffy on how to Xerox photographs, as well. Afton titles, by contrast, commonly include more than 100 full-color reproductions. Production costs for a book--printed in editions that seldom exceed 5,000 copies--run in the range of $125,000.

Since 1994 the press has produced four to six titles a year, books on a wide range of subjects: the 19th-century American Indian paintings of Seth Eastman; abandoned farmhouses in the heartland; the Gág family of celebrated artists and children's authors; and legendary Minnesota architects Clarence H. Johnston, Cass Gilbert, and Ralph Rapson. More recently, Afton has chronicled the early American landscape painter Gilbert Munger and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police illustrations from the Tweed Museum in Duluth. Along the way, Afton has also published the work of such Minnesota literary institutions as Jon Hassler, Carol Bly, and Bill Holm.

Despite the quality of the books Johnston publishes, and despite some remarkable success stories, her press remains something of a secret society on the local and regional literary scene. Part of that may be a product of the local historical society tag; there is not, in fact, any direct connection between Johnston's press and the Afton Historical Society. (Johnston is nonetheless planning on shortening the name to Afton Press or Afton Publishing in the near future.)

There is also the fact that by virtually any publishing model Afton is an unconventional little operation. Though the company has cultivated relationships with and benefited from the munificence of scores of foundations and a roster of well-heeled local families the likes of which one might have encountered at a Minikahda cotillion in the 1950s, Afton is still very much a Johnston family project. The press has a staff of three full-time employees, anchored by Patricia and her son Chuck, who is the director of operations. One of Johnston's daughters, Mary Sue Oleson, who is a country singer based in Nashville, designs most of Afton's books. A guy who lives just up the street from the company's offices coordinates their printing, and the press also employs a part-time bookkeeper.

There are, however, no sales reps, and though Afton does sell its books through many of the usual distribution channels, Johnston says, "The easiest way for people to get things from us is still just to call. I always intend to do more, but I probably don't make more than three or four sales calls a year.

"We've been very fortunate in that we've had lots of good publicity and word of mouth, and people do seek us out," Johnston says with typical modesty.

Consistently producing books of such high quality can't be as easy as Johnston makes it sound. Yet people who've worked with her over the years agree that this unusual knack for doing the seemingly impossible with relative ease is precisely the key to the success of Afton.

"Patricia is so low-key, and they have such a relaxed atmosphere out there," says local writer Jane Hession, who worked with Afton as a co-author of its first Ralph Rapson book. "They're not really like anyone else. When you deal with Afton you don't sit down and meet with a business manager and there are no agents or accountants involved. You just show up, knock on the door, and talk to Patricia."