Rae Titcomb can’t help but straighten slightly askew books as she roams the shelves, hands straying here and there, tidying up. She’s been working fulltime for six years at the bookstore in East Sandwich created by her grandparents that the Boston Globe called “one of the best and most inviting booksellers on the planet.”
Now 29, long graduated from Sandwich High School, she’s the fourth generation of Titcombs at the shop (Rae’s grandparents started it, but her great grandmother Edna worked the cash register into her 90s). Rae says she “fell back” into the family business but then “fell in love with it. It was my dream job I didn’t know I had.”
Titcomb’s defies modernity; an independent, eclectic bookstore (something we’ve been told is not feasible anymore) melded into a rambling 1690s home along historic Route 6A with a renovated barn built by Titcombs, more than 50 years in business, offering bestsellers and a modern array alongside an extensive Cape Cod collection and amazing finds -- a book from the 1500s (in Italian) with animal hide for a cover, a treatise written by Revolutionary War firebrand Tom Paine, a folio of beautiful drawings of ancient architecture, rare and signed first editions.
Then again there are cards, candles, crafts, gifts, games, toys, socks (“every bookstore seems to sell socks,” laughs Rae) that suggest the need for balance or ballast. “Books always come first,” she says, and it’s possible to survive only on book sales, but diversity is one way Titcomb’s maintains.
Even the genesis story of this literary oasis feels out of time, fairy tale:
Ralph and Nancy Titcomb bought an old house in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1966 (so begins this Canterbury tale). He was an engineer at General Electric. The house had been abandoned for a decade and as the children explored the grounds they discovered an old barn protecting a trove of papers and books dating to the 1600s. The family started cataloging, selling via mail order.
When Ralph was transferred in 1969 they moved to East Sandwich, now with eight children. Even so there was space to open a retail bookstore with remnants of the original discovery still at the antiquarian heart of the collection. In 1974, son Ted Titcomb, an aspiring Rhode Island School of Design sculptor, cast a wrought-iron Colonial man (book in hand) that he planted in front of the store, a 6A landmark ever since.
In the mid-1980s Ted and brother Paul (Rae’s dad and uncle) built the barn-style building beside the Colonial home, today’s footprint. Vicky Titcomb diversified the offerings: Beginning with used books, by the 1990s the selection expanded to new as well.
“Putting the right book in the hands of a reader, providing a space to come,” is how Rae defines the dual mission. “Yes, a lot of our customers are older, but we’re also seeing more and more young people. Bookstores are trendy, they’re making a comeback. I think it’s because people are sick of shopping on-line. They want in-person experiences, and bookstores are community spaces.
“Plus, it’s a myth that people don’t read anymore. People read.”
What are they reading?
Younger readers might skew toward fantasy, sci-fi, mysteries, says Rae. Titcomb’s Cape Cod section is popular and deep (four shelves of Joseph Lincoln for example); to keep it that way 80 contemporary Cape-based authors are accepted on consignment, meaning the bookstore pays the writer only after a sale. That keeps overhead down and cash flow smoother, allows for more diversity, but still involves risk.
General fiction is the biggest section, and since 2020 “race and racism as a topic has grown immensely.” During COVID the doors had to close but mail order and curbside drop-offs increased; Titcomb’s can order any book in print (and many that aren’t). Rae says the idea that large chain booksellers can do the same for less often is not true.
Owning rather than renting the space is a major advantage, but even so there have been lean times and as Rae puts it, “my family just kept going. My grandparents and aunt were determined to make it work. They knew how to make it a place people want to come back to.”
Rae has learned that as well, putting together 78 in-person author events last year, two or three a week during summer.
So yes, book reading is a solitary experience. But literary culture is communal. Titcomb’s perch at that nexus offers proof that celebrating the combination remains possible; excise the word “anachronism.”
Hey! That’s my son and me! :)