BLOOMINGTON, Minn. - Bob Showers has a passion for the old Minnesota North Stars

The Waterloo natives passion has made him and Minnesota hockey legend Lou Nanne the talk of the Twin Cities this winter.

The two's book - "Minnesota North Stars, History and Memories with Lou Nanne" - has been selling like hot cakes on a cold January day since its release in early October.

Within three weeks the book sold out its original print of 10,000 forcing Showers to reorder another 10,000. Those are flying off the shelves, too.

"It was 10 years in the making mentally and a year in a half of actual work," said Showers of the book during a recent stopover in Waterloo where his dad, Steve, still lives. "The response has been unbelievable. Whenever Lou and I do a signing, people come up to me and thank me for doing this, and I just say, 'Hey, I'm a North Star fan like you and I wanted this book for myself as much as anything."

Showers, a 1980 West graduate, caught the North Stars fever when North Stars' top farm club, played one season at McElroy Auditorium as the Iowa Stars in 1969.

His family went on to make numerous road trips to see North Star games at the MET Center in Bloomington where his love of the North Stars continued to grow. In fact, Showers childhood and early adult ambition was to be the Minnesota North Stars public relations director.

Showers' dream never was fulfilled, but after graduating from the University of Iowa, Showers moved to Minneapolis in 1987 with $500, a carload of his stuff and no job.

That was on Friday.

On the following Monday he interviewed for a job as a sales representative for the North Stars, got the job on Tuesday and ate lunch with new North Stars coach Herb Brooks on Wednesday.

Showers held that job until 1990 when the team was sold to Norm Green who let go 95 members of the North Stars front office, including Showers.

But it was during those four years Showers developed close relationships with many members of the North Stars, including Nanne, and gave Showers a leg up when he decided to turn an idea of a book into a reality two years ago.

Green moved the North Stars to Dallas after the 1992-93 season and the MET Center (located across the street from where the Mall of American currently sits) was demolished in 1995 leaving a huge void in the history of hockey rich Minnesota.

That was the basis of Showers idea for the book.

"I'm a big fan of historical, archival sports books myself," said Showers. " I was thinking there was nothing to remember the North Stars by. I thought wouldn't it be great to have a book that had all the complete stats, history and stories, nothing from the Dallas Stars, just the North Star years.

"Plus, I had a great relationship with Lou (Nanne) and he is a wonderful story teller who was there from beginning as a player, a coach, general manager and team president."

But the book idea went to the back shelf for more than a decade when Showers and his wife Donna had daughters Jenny and Audrey and Bob became a stay-at-home dad.

It became more of reality in March of 2006 when Jenny became middle school age.

"I didn't mention it to anybody for at least 10 years, but I always thought it would be a great idea," said Showers. "I didn't want to jinx the idea by talking about it. But when my oldest got to middle school, after all those years of designing the book in my head and knowing exactly what I wanted, I first verbalized it to my wife.

"I figured one of two things was going to happen, it either was going to sound ridiculous and my wife would roll her eyes, or she would get excited about the idea and I would get excited about it by saying it out loud."

The response was positive on the homefront.

The next step was getting Nanne on board, which turned out not to be a big problem, either.

For more than a decade, Showers has worked as Nanne's spotter and statistician during Minnesota state hockey tournament broadcasts and a meeting after the 2006 tournament sprung the idea into action.

"I laid out the idea and he loved it," explained Showers. "He told me over the years he had a couple of dozen people approach him about doing a book about him because he didn't think a book of his stories would be much of a base. But he thought a book about the North Stars, intertwined with his stories … that would work."

Over the next 18 months, Showers found a publisher - Beaver Pond Press in Edina, Minn., a company that specializes in first time authors, put in hundreds of hours of research going through 1,000s of newspapers, old articles and photos and spent two days at the Dallas Stars offices in Dallas finely combing through file cabinets of old North Star photos and history.

Showers also spent hours in Nanne's office and on the phone with him as it is through Nanne the book's story is told.

"That was kind of bittersweet," said Showers of the trip to Dallas. "Because at their corporate offices they led me to this little back area where there was a wall of filing cabinets and 26 years of hockey in the Twin Cities was confined to two big filing cabinets.

"But those two cabinets were pure gold as far as getting everything I needed to complete the book.

"The interesting thing was they told me from the time the team moved in 1993 to that moment in July of 2006, not a single person from Minnesota had come to look through those files. For 13 years they sat untouched, so I kind of felt privileged and felt like an emissary because I was bringing back all of this stuff back to where it belongs."

The result of Showers labor of love is a 250-plus page book full of great stories, timeless photos and stats about the Minnesota North Stars.

Over the next few weeks, Showers and Nanne will be appearing throughout Minnesota promoting the book at 13 different signings.

The next signing of the book will be Dec. 5 at the Apache Mall in Rochester, Minn. from 5 to 7:30 p.m. The book can also be purchased online at www.northstarshistory.com.

Contact Jim Nelson at (319) 291-1521 or jim.nelson@wcfcourier.com