One of the problems The Bookmark ran into was that two of the major vendors in the LDS book market — Deseret Book and Covenant (which owns Seagull Book & Tape) — also have bookstores.

Those vendors also sell to big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, which can afford to discount the books at or below cost because costs are offset by a multitude of other products — groceries, clothing, toys, electronics, etc.

"The products are available in so broad of an area now," Ewing said. "Now things are available online. A lot of the younger customers, that's the way they prefer shopping — online."

The Bookmark, too, has a Web site — www.ldsbookmark.

com — but these days, instead of an online catalog of LDS items, visitors will find a goodbye message from Ewing. She also refers her customers to the Web site of her new favorite bookstore, This Is the Place Bookstore in Kensington, Md., which she says carries many of the same items as The Bookmark.

That's good news for the store's Web-savvy customers, but for longtime Bookmark patrons such as Paul and Vicki Wheeler of Springville, it can't replace the personal attention and genuine customer service they came to expect from Ewing and her employees.

"I'm always willing to pay a little more for better service," Paul Wheeler said.

The Bookmark also helped with the hard-to-find items, Vicki Wheeler said.

"There are some things that you won't get anymore," she said. "If Sharon didn't have the book, she would order it for me."

"Yes, you can go to Wal-Mart," Paul Wheeler added, "but Wal-Mart is only going to carry the new, most-popular, best-selling books."

Ewing says she's had many loyal customers over the years — including the Wheelers.

"Since we've started closing out, we've had customers who don't want to see us go refuse to take the discount or they write their check our for more than it should have been," she said.

For longtime employee Carolyn Bloodworth, working at The Bookmark was her social life.

"I'm devastated," said Bloodworth, a widow and Ewing's sister. "I don't know what I'm going to be doing."

Bloodworth said she'll miss seeing the regular customers she got to know during her 15 years working at the store, as well as spending so much time with her sister.

"I guess it's like a beauty shop almost because you share your problems," she said. "You really get to know people. When something new comes in that you know they'll be interested in, you can call them and tell them."

Ewing said she expects The Bookshelf will close its doors for good by Christmas Eve at the latest.

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E-mail: jpage@desnews.com