Meet Chitchee Chichester whose aim is to open his own used book store in Minneapolis, but first he must learn the ropes by working at BookSmart, a book store slowly being strangled to death by the local developers, who own nearby Carousel Square and have set their sights on Uptown and beyond. The developers' plot to overthrow Minneapolis is set against a background of economic recession, political upheaval, and corruption. Chitchee and a small band of book freaks, friends, and co-workers combat the dark, illiterate, incoming storms of an America that has no community of letters. Chitchee is under the delusion of being a book squirrel, given the power of magic acorns. Within an allegorical frame of Islamic mysticism, he creates a mythical dimension that serves as a situation comedy for everyone everywhere who has ever sought refuge in a book or the magic of a book store.