Bookstore in Whitefish Bay bringing the community together one book at a time
WHITEFISH BAY, Wis. (CBS 58) - Whitefish Bay Books opened on Silver Spring Drive this summer, and features hundreds of books.
“It’s a little bit of a boutique bookstore filled with lots of books that I love and hopefully lots of people in the community love,” Owner Karin Werner said.
Werner has had a passion for books since her mom owned a bookstore near Seattle.
“My own mother had a bookstore for 30 years which she opened when I went to kindergarten,” Werner said. “Books have been a constant in my life, I’ve always loved books.”
Werner turned to law as a career, spending decades as a lawyer in downtown Milwaukee and at Marquette University.
“I’d been practicing law for a couple decades, and I decided that I was ready to turn the page and do something new,” Werner said. “I wanted something that I deemed to be a little more fun and also a little more relaxing than practicing law.”
Two and a half years ago, Werner was diagnosed with breast cancer and received treatment at Froedtert Hospital.
“I got tremendous care there from my doctors and went through, ya know, jumped into five months of chemo and then to surgeries, I lost my hair, I went through radiation,” Werner said.
After recovering, it was time for a change, and onto the next chapter.
“It was part of the reason why now coming out of that phase in life I thought it would be a wonderful next chapter to spend time here surrounded by books but sharing it more with others,” Werner said.
Now Werner is able to share her love for books with the community one book at a time.
“There’s nothing like living in a community like this and having those joyful, daily interactions, little and big, with the other people that you bump into whether they’re friends who stop by the shop or new people that you meet through the love of books,” Werner said.
