Discover the stories and faces behind Pullman’s local businesses in our exclusive “Meet the Merchant” series.
Each month, we will highlight a different local business, creating an opportunity for the community to connect and learn about the people who make our downtown unique. This behind-the-scenes look provides the perfect avenue to get to know your community, meet local entrepreneurs, and experience something new.
Sandy Castle del Conte, Owner, Brused Books
Event Details:
- Date: Thursday, March 28
- Time: 5 – 7 PM
- Location: 235 E Main St, Pullman, WA 99163
- Cost: Free and open to all
Get ready to dive into the heart of downtown with this month’s featured business, Brused Books. Join us for an evening focused on Sandy Castle del Conte and the story behind this local gem. Experience live music, catering from The Black Cypress, and hear firsthand from Sandy about how she built Brused Books into a downtown staple.
Come to connect, learn, and discover the unique narrative that makes Sandy and her bookstore an integral part of our community.
About the Merchant:
Brused Books is a cozy, quirky store with creaky maple floors, more than 100,000 books overflowing its tall shelves, and a staff obsessed with books and helping our customers. Brused Books’ name, while clever and iconic, is a bit of a misnomer: Our curated collection is stocked with high quality used books that have not been bruised or abused. Brused Books is best explored in person. The treasure of tomes available in the store changes daily.
Our small polymath team has 70+ years experience buying and selling books. We are always ready to help you find what you are looking for or discover something you didn’t know existed. We comb through thousands of books each week to provide the best collection for our customers. We could not have built our store without our wonderful community who provides us with books, bookshelves, chairs, and even donated an upright piano.
The name Brused Books came to founder Bruce Calkins in a dream. It is a contraction of his name and “used books.” In his youth, Bruce perused the shelves of Inland Book Store in Spokane – a used bookstore often without heat. Inland’s extremely frugal proprietor sacrificed all amenities, including repairs to his store, to spend a few weeks in England each year. Bruce was inspired to apply for a business license to start his own bookstore after spending his childhood in a dusty bookstore with few customers and a broken furnace, reading articles about the impending Demise of the Book, and his lawyer advising him “that will never work.”
In 1981, Brused Books began as a booth in the Combine Mall, where the Black Cypress now resides. Shortly after it moved to the Mason building (now Palouse Country Candy). In 2001, Brused Books moved to its current Main Street location and established itself as the bustling downtown Pullman anchor business it is today.
Bruce passed the torch to current owner Sandy Castle del Conte in 2022. Sandy discovered Brused Books on a summer trip to Pullman shortly after being awarded Best Reader of her first grade (see photo). She bought FireStarter, by Stephen King, because she had seen a movie advertisement of a girl her age with supernatural abilities. She was too young to watch the movie, so devoured the book instead. A jack of all trades, Sandy has ventured through life reading incessantly and delighting in her friends, family, and many interests, such as carpentry, music, gardening and insects. Years after finding Brused Books, she applied for a 12 hour per week position at the store and her dream job began.
Sandy has used her tenacity, elbow grease, and a whole lot of gratitude to embellish Brused Books. She insisted on moving a piano into the store. Sandy is deeply appreciative of her community of fellow Brusers, her exceedingly generous mentors Sally Burkhart, Peg Harrington, and Bruce, and her fabulous small business advisor, Aziz Makhani.
