Overview

A veteran journalist follows an inspiring ensemble cast of small business owners fighting to keep their businesses alive through Covid-19, while exploring the sweeping trends and government policies that had brought small businesses to the breaking point long before the coronavirus hit. There is a tendency to fetishize small business even as it shrinks before our eyes. Americans extol the virtues of small, local, often family-run shops, yet buy from big-box retailers and chains that dominate the competition. Even before the pandemic, small businesses seemed endangered. When Covid-19 hit, the resounding question was: How will they be able to survive this? Saving Main Street is an unfiltered, up-close examination of a small group of business owners and their employees, their struggles, and their strategies to survive. It is an eye-opening tale of grit, perseverance, and entrepreneurial spirit that follows three businesses: a restaurant owner and his rambunctious staff, an immigrant running her own hair salon, and the owner of a non-life sustaining gift shop--alongside a larger cast of vividly drawn characters. Gary Rivlin focuses on the first days of the Covid lockdown and the ensuing eighteen months of chaos, including the personal and financial risks, a contentious presidential election, and contradictory governmental guidelines--all which compounded the everyday challenges of running an independent business trying to attract and retain customers who expect low prices, convenience, and endless choice. Rivlin keenly observes small businesses from all angles, examining commonly held myths; contradictions in government policy; enormous racial and class fissures; a national self-identity intrinsically connected to the ideal of small business, and how the decline of this American way of retail impacts our notions of American exceptionalism, community, and civic duty. As Rivlin reveals, there's something enduring about small business in the American psyche. Life will have changed in unprecedented ways on the other side of this pandemic, yet hard times will also create opportunities, offering hope and survival.

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Gary Rivlin is the award-winning author of Fire on the Prairie; Drive By, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and The Plot to Get Bill Gates, among other works. A two-time Gerald Loeb Award winner, he has worked as a writer and reporter for the New York Times, Industry Standard, East Bay Express, and the Chicago Reader. Despite being born on the first day of summer long before too much sun was considered bad for you, Iva-Marie Palmer possesses no capacity to achieve a decent tan (or its cousin, the sun-kissed glow). Still, she relocated from her native Chicago to sunny Southern California nearly ten years ago and only regrets the choice on the rare occasions when she forgets to apply sunscreen. A former journalist who oversubscribes to periodicals, she loves books, running, cooking and eating elaborate meals, classic screwball comedies, food sold off carts and trucks, old movie palaces, word games and crossword puzzles, adventures large and small, indulging her curiosity, and overextending herself. She lives with her husband, son, and a seeming inability to take her sunglasses off her head when indoors. You can find her online on Facebook, Twitter (follow @ivamarie), and at www.ivamariepalmer.com.

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