Tucked into a small storefront at Pershing and Jackson in University City, right next to Taco Buddha, sits a brand-new bookstore that was six weeks old and already felt like it had always belonged there.
Gold Shoe Books is the longtime daydream of Debra Kennard, a lifelong book lover who grew up in St. Louis, spent years working in advertising in Chicago, then came home to raise a family and eventually took a job at WashU. Through it all, the idea of opening her own shop kept nagging at her.
Once her kids finished college, she started thinking seriously about a new chapter. “I got to the point where I was like, ‘I feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over again. I’m ready for a new adventure,'” she recalls. She looked at spaces, drew up business plans, and ran the numbers — but nothing quite worked.
Then, this past spring, everything changed on an ordinary walk. Kennard was strolling from her U City home toward campus when she noticed the business leasing a little storefront at Pershing and Jackson was moving out. She struck up a conversation with the owner — and suddenly the dream was back on, in a big way.
“It is literally just a story of right time, right place,” she says. “Everything happened in, like, three weeks.” By September, the doors were open.
The shop is small — just 300 square feet, with one employee (Kennard herself) and tightly curated shelves. But it’s a bright, charming space, with fun gifts mixed in alongside a surprisingly deep book selection. A framed sign on the wall asks visitors, “What would you like to see at the store?” Customers have had plenty of ideas, from Jellycat stuffies to more graphic novels.
Kennard has been pleasantly surprised to find that following her own reading tastes has paid off. She loves literary fiction, but figured she ought to stock romances and other popular genres to be strategic. Turns out her neighbors share her ambitious palate.
“Some people come in and have gone right to the romance section, and that’s what they want,” she says. But, “It’s just that’s not what’s turning over a lot. I guess because we’re close to WashU, it’s an educated area.” Her customers, she says, “know the things that are on the Booker Prize list.”
On a recent Wednesday morning, she chatted easily with a woman looking for a vacation read or two and recommended The Wedding People, Alison Espach’s 2024 novel. “If you didn’t read that, you might like it,” Kennard told her. “It’s light without being silly.”
“I like light without being silly,” the woman agreed — and walked out with a copy.
Kennard says that’s the heart of the job. “It’s so much relationship building. People are in here all the time, and I love talking to them, hearing what they’re excited to read, what they’re looking for.” Young visitors have helped shape the kids’ section, too, pushing her to stock the City Spies series, which hadn’t been on her radar before opening. “They’ve really built this,” she says of the young adult shelves.
What people seem to want most, she says, is simply a place to show up — to say hello to a fellow book lover and maybe have a conversation. Kennard has done little to publicize the opening (it was a neighbor who tipped off the press), yet foot traffic has been steady. “The neighborhood and the customers have just been so enthusiastic,” she says. “And at six weeks in, I’m still getting people who walk in and are like, ‘Oh my God, we are so excited you are here!'”
She’s excited too. She named the shop after a classic children’s book, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes — the story of a mother rabbit who puts her own dream on hold while raising her children, then gets her chance years later to become the Easter bunny, honored above all rabbits.
“She was a bunny who had a dream, and she didn’t do it because she got busy with kids, but she did that really well. And then later in life, she got a chance to do her dream, and she actually got it because of being a mom — all the things that she had learned and done,” Kennard explains.
The book stayed with her for years after she read it to her children when they were small. “It just hit me at that moment, like good books do,” she says. “She couldn’t do exactly what she wanted then, but ‘not now’ doesn’t mean never.”
So many customers have asked about the name that Kennard started stocking the book itself — and she’s been moved by the reaction from mothers who pick it up and turn the pages. “Some get tears in their eyes,” she says. She was one of them once. She can relate.
It’s a good moment to be opening a bookstore, counterintuitive as that might sound in the age of AI. The American Booksellers Association reported in its most recent annual report that 605 new bookstores opened in the U.S. last year, and most of its members saw sales climb in 2025. Barnes & Noble is mounting a comeback of its own — it’s opening its second St. Louis-area store in as many years this month. Under CEO James Daunt, the once-struggling chain has returned to growth in part by trusting local managers to know their markets.
Kennard is doing exactly that, one conversation at a time, in 300 square feet on Pershing.
