For Elyse Chambers, Wild Plum Books is more than a bookstore. Tucked in a small space in St. Helena, her thoughtfully curated shop has become a gathering place for readers, writers, and the Napa Valley community. A lifelong reader and writer herself, Elyse believes in the power of a personal recommendation and the connections that happen when people come together over a good book.
For our October edition of Cultivating Conversations, we spoke with Elyse about the unexpected path to bookstore ownership, the art of curating a small but meaningful collection, and the importance of independent bookstores in an increasingly digital world. She also shares how her literary partnership with Auberge du Soleil* is bringing authors and readers together in Napa Valley, and what's next for Wild Plum Books.
*Editor’s Note: A Persephone Social Client!
© Captured by Catherine Dzilenski
can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I have lived in Napa Valley for nearly 24 years. I came here after a stint teaching English as a second language in Prague and took a job in the marketing department at Meadowood, a gorgeous, sprawling resort. I spent the years that followed marketing luxury hotels and wineries and, surprisingly, an interior design firm. When the design firm shuttered, I was looking for my next thing.
Beneath all of that ran something else. I was diagnosed with Stage IV Non–Hodgkin's Lymphoma when my oldest daughter was ten months old. The cancer returned, aggressively and frighteningly, when I was pregnant with my second daughter, and for a while it wasn't clear I would survive. A clinical trial saved my life.
“When you come out the other side of something like that, you get very particular about how you want to spend this one and only life. I knew I wanted to spend mine around books.”
© Captured by Catherine Dzilenski
Do you remember the moment you realized you wanted to take over the bookstore?
For forty years, the little bookstore in St. Helena was called Main Street Books. In 2024, Liza, who had run it for decades, decided to retire. I happened to be in the shop that day, which was not unusual, and Naomi, who owned it by then, was working the register. She got a funny look in her eye, turned to me and said,
“I think this store is supposed to be yours. What do you think?”
We both cried. I was between jobs. My father had recently passed away and left me a little money. It felt like divine timing, and I said yes.
What is it about books that has kept you coming back to them throughout every stage of your life?
Some of my earliest memories are of reading on my bedroom floor, lying on a deep green, thick–pile carpet with every American Girl book and Nancy Drew I could get my hands on. I was the kid way up in the nosebleeds at a baseball game, buried in a book while my family whooped and cheered down below.
When my oldest daughter, Faye, was born, she spent the first month of her life in the NICU. I couldn’t hold her often, so I read aloud to her instead. We got through four novels while she was there, starting with George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo. And, yes, maybe a book about a grieving father feels like an odd choice, but I wanted her to know my voice.
Later, I read in the Barcaloungers during chemo infusions and in a hundred hospital waiting rooms. The kid in the bleachers, the new mother, the patient: books have been the one constant through every version of me.
“They’ve let me live inside someone else's mind, which has taught me more about being human than anything else.”
© Captured by Emma Kruch (Let) and Catherine Dzilenski (Right)
WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THE WILD PLUM NAME?
The shop had been Main Street Books, and during the pandemic it became part of Napa Bookmine. I was a loyal customer through both chapters and bought nearly every book I read there.
Taking it over meant deciding what it would become, starting with the name. It came from two places. The first was Alice Waters and her belief that something truly perfect, a ripe peach at the height of summer, needs no embellishment. I wanted a bookstore that worked the same way. The second was a question I couldn’t stop asking:
“what grew in Napa Valley before it was all vineyards? Wild plum trees, everywhere.”
I wanted the shop to feel like a little jewelbox when you walked in. The walnut display in the center and the shelves lining the walls were already there. I laid darker wood floors to match the walnut, then painted everything, shelves, walls, and ceiling, a glossy 1950s green. I added chrome outlet covers, rattan light fixtures, and a custom window bench with a street–facing book display. Its trippy marbled cushions make it a cozy spot to sit and thumb through a book.
I said yes to owning the bookstore because it felt like the first thing I was allowed to truly want on the other side of my illness. I no longer wanted to market someone else’s vision. I could stock the shelves with whatever books I wanted and make a playlist to match my mood. It is mine, and there is such freedom in that.
You’ve written about how meaningful your relationship with the bookstore’s former owner was to you. What did that experience teach you about the role an independent bookseller can play in someone’s life?
Liza is brilliant and soft–spoken, with an encyclopedic mind, and I spent hours in that shop trading notes with her about whatever we were each reading. Somewhere in those conversations, she came to know me.
Unexpectedly, she became a kind of mentor. I write, too, and when an essay was published or I had a piece of good news, she was the first person I wanted to tell. She warned me against buying too many writing how–tos and told me to trust my own instincts. She is an intensely private person, so when she revealed a little about herself, or confessed that she didn't like a certain popular novel, I felt I had been let into the inner circle.
“That’s what she taught me: a good bookseller tells you the truth.”
Anyone can sell you the bestseller. The gift is the person who will tell you it isn’t very good, and then hand you the book you’ll actually love. I stand where she stood now, and I try to earn that same trust, one honest opinion at a time.
© Captured by Catherine Dzilenski
Wild Plum is a particularly small bookstore. How does working within such an intimate space influence what makes it onto your shelves?
When I first opened, I thought I had to be everything for everyone: the Grisham reader, the romantasy fanatic, all of it. I learned quickly that wasn't the job. The job is handing someone a book and saying, this one will make you laugh, or this one will break your heart. So I stopped carrying Grisham, because he’s not an author I read. You can pick him up at the airport on your way to Napa. Once you’re here, I’ll find you the novel you otherwise would have missed.
That’s not to say I don’t love a bestseller. I do, and I stock the big literary fiction titles because that’s what I love most.
“But the size of the store demands editing, and it turns out I’m a very happy editor.”
What are your customers reading right now?
Like me, the Wild Plum customer tends to love anything on the NYT reading list. The new Ann Patchett is a marvel. Chloe Benjamin’s Under Story has everyone buzzing. Emma Cline’s knife-sharp Switzy.
“I find that people love deeply human stories.”
Characters you hate to say goodbye to at the end of the book. People are still scooping up The Correspondent for exactly that reason because it’s a book that makes you reflect on your own life. Belle Burden’s Strangers does the same thing as a memoir.
© Captured by Catherine Dzilenski
How much does being in Napa Valley shape the books you carry and the conversations happening inside the shop?
Some. Visitors occasionally come in looking for books about wine, and the wine geeks flock to the store for the latest issue of Noble Rot, the British wine magazine I’m a little obsessed with. But most people who walk through the door are on vacation. They’ve done the tastings. What they want now is a book to get lost in by the pool.
What do you hope someone understands about Wild Plum simply by browsing its shelves?
I hope they understand that I’m greedy. Not for money (God knows, a 250–square–foot bookstore is not how anyone gets rich) but for books that make you feel something in your body. Novels that make you hungry, memoirs that make you wince, the kind of sentence you have to read twice. If you browse for ten minutes and leave wanting to read everything, I’ve done my job.
In an era of Amazon, next-day delivery, and seemingly endless recommendations online, what do you think people are still looking for from their local bookstore?
Speed has never been the key to pleasure. Yes, you can have a book on your doorstep tomorrow, but so much is lost in that transaction.
A woman came into the shop in those first weeks after I opened, and I handed her The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. She doesn’t live here, but a year later, on her next trip to St. Helena, she came back to tell me she’d given copies to her mom and her sister. Now she makes a point of stopping in whenever she’s in town, asking what she should read next and trusting me to get it right. That trust is everything.
An algorithm can tell you what other people bought. It will never tell you a bestseller fell flat, argue with you about an ending, or remember that you hated the last thing it suggested. Those conversations are the best part of my day.
“And there is nothing like putting exactly the right book into someone’s hands, knowing they’re about to disappear into it.”
Social media has also changed how people discover books, from BookTok to Substack. Has that changed what customers come in asking for or how you think about discovery at Wild Plum?
Less than you might think, at least on my side of the counter. I’m not on TikTok, and Instagram’s algorithm and I have never quite understood each other. So I get most of my recommendations on Substack, from writers like Emma Straub, Catherine Newman, and Pandora Sykes. A novelist’s recommendation is the closest thing to a bookseller’s.
My customers don’t come in waving screenshots, but I can always tell when a book has caught fire online. Suddenly everyone is asking for the same title. I don’t always know where the spark started, but I can see the smoke.
“Substack is also where I write ChickLits, a weekly newsletter pairing book reviews with style finds inspired by the characters.”
Local readers often read the newsletter and pop into the store to grab the book I just raved about. So maybe discovery hasn’t changed so much as moved. People still want someone whose taste they trust to tell them what to read next. Sometimes that’s me at the register, and sometimes it’s me in their inbox.
You host author conversations and other events through Wild Plum. What makes an author, book, or conversation feel right for your community?
“I only host authors whose books I truly love.”
That’s the whole test. If I can’t talk about a book with real excitement, I have no business sitting across from the person who wrote it.
It’s also how the room fills. The people who come are the same ones who let me choose their next read at the store, so when I tell them I love a book, they show up. Most have already read it by the time they take their seats. The result is a room full of people who already care, and authors can feel it from the stage.
These days I’m usually the one in the other chair, interviewing the author myself. I don’t ask about the writing process or how they built a character. I want to talk about identity, the joys and the heartbreaks, the stuff of life. Both Catherine Newman and Belle Burden told me afterward they’d never been interviewed quite that way, and they meant it kindly. My favorite review came from Catherine’s husband, who found me after the event and said, “I’ve sat through a lot of these over the years, and this was by far one of the best.” Spouses are the toughest audience.
You’re both a writer and a bookseller. Has spending your days surrounded by other people’s work changed the way you approach your own writing?
Honestly, it doesn’t help with the self–doubt! Since opening the store, I read more closely than I ever have, and I’m acutely aware of how much talent is out there.
“Some days that’s humbling. Most days it’s wildly inspiring.”
Liza once warned me against buying writing how–tos, and it turns out I didn’t need them. I’m surrounded by hundreds; they just happen to be novels. I highlight and dog–ear constantly, studying the knife-sharp sentences of Emma Cline or Laurie Colwin’s playful, lush writing about food. Colwin has been a constant companion as I've worked on my memoir, Glutton, about my first years of motherhood, cancer, and the hungers that made me feel most alive.
© Captured by Mariana Calderon
Wild Plum has partnered with Auberge du Soleil on literary programming. How did that relationship first begin, and how has it evolved over time?
The relationship started long before Wild Plum. Years ago I worked in marketing at Auberge du Soleil, and Renee Risch, now the Director of Sales & Marketing, was my boss. When I first imagined bringing authors to Napa, she was the first person I called. She has championed the series from the beginning, and she trusts me with whatever I dream up, which is a rare gift in any partnership.
We started this spring with Elise Loehnen, and it has only grown from there. Eliza Dumais and Caroline Chambers came for an evening in conversation, then Catherine Newman, then Belle Burden, and Chloe Benjamin joins us on November 15.
“Auberge provides the incredible space, and I bring the books, the authors, and the conversation.”
© Captured by Mariana Calderon
At Persephone, we think a lot about how the most memorable hospitality experiences can connect travelers more deeply with a destination. What can books, authors, and literary programming reveal about a place that a visitor might not discover otherwise?
Most people arrive in Napa knowing exactly what it is: wine, beautiful hotels, long lunches. All true. But there’s another valley underneath that one, and a bookstore is one of the few places a visitor can find it. It’s why I named the shop after the wild plums that grew here before the vineyards.
“A tasting room shows you what Napa makes. A bookstore shows you who lives here.”
Spend twenty minutes at Wild Plum and you’ll meet a winemaker still in his Blundstones after a day of harvest, a mom of three whose kids are sprawled on the floor with the latest Dog Man, and a stylish woman in her seventies desperate to talk about the new Ann Patchett.
The events do the same thing on a larger scale. When a visitor takes a seat at Auberge alongside fifty or so locals to hear an author talk about marriage or grief or motherhood, they stop being a tourist for an evening. They’re part of the valley’s conversation.
© Captured by Mariana Calderon
Independent bookstores have always been gathering places as much as retail spaces. What role do you hope Wild Plum continues to play in the Napa Valley community?
I hope it’s a place where kids grow up reading. Some of my favorite customers can barely see over the counter, and more and more, the local schools are inviting me to participate. This October I brought a table full of Spanish–language and bilingual books to the school’s Fiesta de Octubre. A town needs a room where a kid can curl up on the window bench with a book and nobody hurries her along.
“Napa has always had a world-class table. I’d love for it to have a world-class bookshelf, too.
The shop is my piece of that, and the author evenings at Auberge stretch it further, bringing writers to the valley who might otherwise skip it on tour. Then there are the ChickLits readers, some of whom have never set foot in St. Helena, who write to tell me what they’re reading. The community reaches well past these four green walls.
What’s next for Wild Plum? Is there an idea for the store, its programming, or its community that you haven’t had the chance to bring to life yet?
Next is a podcast, launching this winter, that grows out of the author evenings. I’ll be talking with writers, but also with creative women of all kinds, about what inspires them, what they’re reading, and the books that shaped them.
There’s also a project quietly in the works that I can’t say much about yet. Ask me again next year.
And someday I’d love a little sister for the shop: an annex or a summer pop–up in a charming East Coast town. If a hotel out there wants a bookstore in its lobby, I know just the woman.