Featuring Wallace Baine & Neal Coonerty
Longtime Santa Cruz Sentinel arts editor and columnist Wallace Baine authors a love song to the power of books to enrich our lives in A Light in the Midst of Darkness: The Story of a Bookshop, a Community and True Love. Baine tells the amazing and inspiring story of Neal and Candy Coonerty, who met at a Yeats conference in Ireland and went on to own Bookshop Santa Cruz, detailing how they turned the bookstore into a colorful and thriving hub of the Monterey Bay community. With their daughter now at the helm, the book chronicles Bookshop Santa Cruz’s 50 year history including surviving a devastating earthquake, the digital revolution, and the withering forces of contemporary American capitalism, ultimately standing as a beacon in the national independent bookstore movement.
A Light in the Midst of Darkness is a publication of Wellstone Books and kicks off Wellstone Books' "Support Your Local Independent” series. The publication of A Light in the Midst of Darkness celebrates Bookshop Santa Cruz’s 50th anniversary in November, 2016.
