ALPINE — Kendra DuBois feels at home in Alpine’s Front Street Books, partially since she’s served as its bookkeeper for several years, but also because she’s been browsing its shelves since her youth.
“We’ve been shopping at the bookstore since I was in high school,” she said. “It’s definitely something that was a big part of my life, especially in discovering the outside world. Because I was born here and raised here, which is a really cool thing, but it can be pretty isolating. In finding Front Street Books, anything you wanted to read, you could find it.”
When longtime owner Anne Calaway told DuBois she wanted to step back from the operation, DuBois made an offer and purchased the store along with her husband, Jonathan, who she helps run an electrical services business. “When it was offered, one of the things that was very important to me was just to keep that feeling of the store going,” she said. “I want other people to have that same experience, to have a place that, you know, if you want to read a certain book about caterpillars, if we don’t have it, we can find it.”
DuBois said that she always relished the store’s ability to do special orders. “So, whatever archaeology nerdy thing I happened to be really into at the time, they were happy to get stuff for me,” she said. “It’s always been a place that I’ve really appreciated. I graduated, moved away for quite a while, lived all over the place, but every time I came home to visit, one of the places I always needed to go back to was the bookstore.”
Calaway bought the store — which opened around 1994 — in 2018 from Jean Hardy-Pittman and continued its traditional role as an independent book seller that carries a wide variety of titles in addition to collectibles and books about the Big Bend. Book signings, book club meetings and other events have always been featured as often as possible, Calaway said, since she strived to be connected to the community.
“Anne has done a wonderful job of keeping the store cool and interesting with all the literary events and people coming in,” DuBois said. “The authors that she brings in are really fun, and they have such varied interests and topics that they write on. So many of them are engaging and interesting to talk to.”
Calaway said she sold the store because it was time for a new generation of ownership after seven years at the helm. “I just didn’t want to see it close, though,” she said. “And when Kendra started working for me, within a week or two, I knew that she would be a good fit for this. The same staff will stay in place, and it will continue. It will only get better with Kendra.”
DuBois said she wants to remain an integral part of the Alpine community and serve locals as well as tourists, offering a place to come in and relax and meander. She often gets asked whether physical books are a dying business, but DuBois said some national booksellers are actually expanding, and there is no replacing the personal touch you get at a small-town independent store. Even the aroma adds to the experience. “Books absolutely have a smell,” she said. “That’s the reason why bookstores are still in business.”
DuBois said the only new additions — besides expanded hours on Saturday and being open on Sunday — will be some marketing initiatives like free books for kids on their birthday and a loyalty program that offers a free book (up to a certain dollar limit) for customers who purchase a given number of books.
Calaway said Friday will be her last day at the store, but she plans to go out with a “bang” by participating in the national Blackout Friday, in which Americans are encouraged not to spend money at certain locations and on certain items as a protest to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cuts to programs and termination of federal employees. “The cash register will be closed, but we’ll be open in protest,” she said.
While the Blackout is intended to target no sales at big box retailers and corporate chains, Calaway said her employees thought it would make a statement of protest against corporate greed and political influence. And she wanted a final farewell that concentrates on reading. She said it was the staff’s idea. “The way that they worded it is telling customers to bring a book from your bookshelf to sit and read, or they can grab one off of our shelves and sit and read and enjoy the space.”
Front Street Books is open from Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 121 E Holland Avenue in Alpine.