VERMILLION, S.D. — Their time in this small Midwestern town was nearly over, but for now, Mike Phelan still had a business to run, so he and his daughter leashed their dog and headed up the street.

The commute took three minutes. The Phelans passed sprawling Victorian houses with wraparound porches, then, Mike pulled out his keys. When they moved here from Chicago five years ago, Mike discovered Vermillion had a university, locally made bread Oprah Magazine once declared the best in the world, and an author who’d won the National Book Award. But Vermillion didn’t have a bookstore. No university town should exist without a place to buy novels and new nonfiction, Mike thought, so he’d opened one and named it “Outside of a Dog” after a Groucho Marx quote — “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.”