Last Thursday night, having turned off the lights after the first full day’s trading at the newly-reopened Bunch of Grapes bookstore, Katherine Fergason sat down in the aisle, in the dark, in the silence and cried.
Happy tears this time.
It was not just that the bookstore was back — albeit in temporary form and in a temporary location — after the July Fourth fire.
It was the smell of 4,000 brand new books. And the smiles of scores of old customers.
The Bunch of Grapes Bookstore will reopen next month in temporary quarters on Church street, after Vineyard Haven resident Dawn Braasch yesterday closed a deal to buy the business from Jon Nelson.
Ms. Braasch has run a multimillion dollar trucking firm, started a successful catering company, taught preschool in Chilmark and South Carolina, and worked for a year as the events coordinator at the Bunch of Grapes before the Fourth of July fire devastated the building and closed the business.
Purchase price for the business has not been disclosed.
Island writers are expressing sympathy and sadness for the loss, they hope only temporarily, of the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven that was devastated by fire on July 4.
A disastrous Independence Day fire completely destroyed the Café Moxie restaurant and left the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore badly damaged, shutting down Main street Vineyard Haven for the entire day and leaving the town, its business community and much of the Island in a state of shock at the outset of peak summer season.
But the owner of the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore promised yesterday that it would reopen.
Bookstore owner Jon C. Nelson Jr. said he will rebuild.
“Absolutely. I am committed to rebuilding the Bunch of Grapes,” said Mr. Nelson on Sunday afternoon.
That commitment was one of the few certainties Mr. Nelson had two days after the Fourth of July fire that heavily damaged the landmark Vineyard Haven bookstore.
