A Story Years in the Making
The story of The Unwritten Chapter Bookshop began long before the trailer.
In 2008, I was preparing to open my own bookstore. A location had been chosen, plans were underway and we had even broken ground. Then the recession hit. Financing disappeared, banks stopped lending and the bookstore I had worked toward never had the chance to open.
Life continued. I built a career, raised a family, and carried that dream quietly in the background. Over the years, illness also became part of my family’s story, and the past year brought the loss of people very close to us. Those experiences changed the way I looked at time and at how easily we can postpone the things that matter most.
The dream of owning a bookstore had always been there, but my willingness to keep postponing it had changed. I realized I could continue waiting for the perfect building, the perfect timing, and the perfect circumstances—or I could find another way to begin.
Nearly two decades after that first attempt, my husband, Andrew, and I transformed a 7-by-14-foot enclosed trailer into the bookstore I had imagined all those years ago. Today, The Unwritten Chapter Bookshop travels throughout Michigan, bringing new adult fiction and a distinctive bookstore experience directly to readers.
Building The Unwritten Chapter Bookshop is one of the ways I have chosen to keep creating, planning and moving forward.
The dream never changed. The building, the timing and the way we brought it to life did.
