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At 62, Ann Patchett is the rare and fortunate writer whose words resonate among friends and strangers alike. She owns one of the country’s signature independent bookstores, Parnassus Books in Nashville, with customers ranging from local book lovers to Tom Hanks.

She’s also a popular and prize-winning novelist whose new books are inevitably among the year’s most anticipated, and whose older ones, including the acclaimed Bel Canto, published in 2001, continue to sell. She received a National Humanities Medal five years ago for “putting into words the beauty, pain, and complexity of human nature.”

Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages, but her home is in Nashville, where she spent part of her childhood and now lives with her husband, physician Karl VanDevender.

Patchett spoke at Parnassus with The Associated Press on a sunny weekday morning, shortly before her 4,800-square-foot store opened. She was there early to talk about Whistler, published in June.

Like other Patchett novels, it’s a story of improbable meetings and deepening bonds. In this case, 53-year-old Daphne Fuller and her husband encounter an elderly man, Eddie Triplett, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Realizing he was briefly her stepfather when she was a girl, Daphne forms a strong friendship with Eddie.

Patchett doesn’t write with any message in mind, but Whistler can be read as an ode to decency and benevolence. At one point in the novel, Daphne wonders if it’s safe to seek help, and Eddie assures her, “I swear to you, it’s mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges.”

That’s Patchett’s everyday experience.

“The people that I interact with every single day are good people,” Patchett said. “It is vanishingly rare when I meet someone who’s not nice.

“Now, if you watch the news and read the news, it seems like everyone’s terrible and murderous … I completely understand that there is incredible horror and cruelty in the world, but I also feel like incredible horror and cruelty is very well represented [in art]. And what I actually experience in my daily life is not as well represented in art.

“I don’t set out to write books about nice people,” she added, “but I like people.”

Honored by PEN America

Patchett’s sense of citizenship was recognized recently by PEN America, which at its annual May gala in Manhattan presented her with its Literary Service Award.

In introducing her, author Patrick Ryan cited her wide range of contributions, whether working “to get books into the hands of children in underserved communities,” supporting emerging writers or inspiring readers “who recognize themselves in her novels.”

Patchett has a well-lived appreciation for connections, and how they can be broken by discord or ended by death.

A native of Los Angeles, she was in early childhood when her parents divorced and she moved east with her mother, events drawn upon for her novel Commonwealth.

A bookseller who inspires

Patchett, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, remembers telling stories even before she could read, a gap she said only intensified her appreciation of the printed word.

Raised before the rise of “young adult” books, she started out reading such children’s favorites as Charlotte’s Web and The Little House on the Prairie series, and ascended directly to the literary giants who became her formative influences: Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and John Updike.

By her early 20s, Patchett was accomplished enough to have a story published in The Paris Review. Patchett’s debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, came out before she had turned 30.

She has since published nine other works of fiction, including Whistler, along with four nonfiction books and three picture books, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser.

“I was at my cousins’ house a few months ago, and they had boxes of old papers of mine,” Patchett said. “And they were from grade school, middle school, high school — notebook after notebook, poetry and stories. I was shocked by the extent I was practicing my craft at age 10.”

Bookstores on the rise

Patchett’s life as a bookseller began around 2010, when the closing of two Nashville stores seemed to mirror a nationwide decline brought about in part by Amazon’s rise. Patchett and business partner Karen Hayes came up with a seemingly wild plan: open a new store — a decision met with some skepticism at the time, but now a sign of the changing fortunes of independent sellers.

Membership in the American Booksellers Association has more than doubled over the past decade — including such author-run stores as Straub’s Books Are Magic in New York City and Jeff Kinney’s An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Massachusetts. Straub said that when she was thinking of opening her store, she spoke with various friends who owned small businesses.

“They all told me not to do it, but when I talked to Ann, she said ‘Do it,’” Straub said. “She’s my hero.”

—AP