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She opened a bookstore in Sierra Madre. After the fires, she saw how it could help

February 21, 2025

Not long after opening her new bookstore, Fables & Fancies, in Sierra Madre last fall, Ana Buckley said she was having a hard time letting things go.

And by “things,” she meant the books she was selling to customers.

“They were taking my books too quickly for me,” she laughed, recalling those first days in the shop, but she’s since come to terms with the process.

“I’ve learned to be OK with people buying the books and taking them away from me,” she said. “Now I’m better with it.”

When Buckley and I first spoke in December, the conversation dealt mostly with the challenges and excitement of opening her first bookstore, which will sell both new and used books, on Sierra Madre’s main street.

“This is the first time where everything about this space is my call: The color of the walls, the books I carry, the decorations I put up for the holidays. It’s such an exciting, lovely feeling to look around and be like, ‘Yeah, this is how I want it,’” she said. “You create the space you want to be in. That’s what it feels like.”

Ana Buckley, seen here on Dec. 21, 2024, is the owner of the bookstore Fables & Fancies in Sierra Madre. (Photo by Erik Pedersen/SCNG)

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Ana Buckley, seen here on Dec. 21, 2024, is the owner of the bookstore Fables & Fancies in Sierra Madre. (Photo by Erik Pedersen/SCNG)

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Since that first conversation, however, Buckley and her co-owner husband Tim, like so many in the communities of Sierra Madre, Pasadena and Altadena, have been dealing with the challenges presented by recent wildfires, power outages, rain and mudslides.

The store had been open less than two months when the fires hit, and so we spoke again last Saturday to catch up on what’s been happening.

After she and her husband evacuated with what she calls her “circus” – two cats, two dogs and a mother-in-law – they were grateful to learn their apartment had been spared. So the question became when they could get back in and go to work.

“We just had to wait until the power came back,” she says, and once she could return she cleaned the space and found that her stock had fared OK. “I got really lucky there.”

Buckley says booksellers at Octavia’s Bookshelf and Black Cat Fables messaged to check in on her, and once the store reopened, she wanted to begin providing services to the community. She loaded shelves with donated books that were free to those impacted by the fires and hosted storytimes for children.

“We have donated books for people who need to rebuild their home libraries,” she says. “There was a two-week period when kids were out of school – and parents, I could see were just a little frantic– so we did a storytime twice a day.

“I put out a call to the community if anybody wanted to come and volunteer,” she says, adding that the response was overwhelming. “So many people volunteered to read to the kids.”

Buckley says they found other ways to help, too, such as providing space in the back for a local yoga studio to hold classes and offering a welcoming place for those who needed one.

“Every single day that I was here once we reopened, somebody would come in who had lost their home, and some people were barely keeping it together,” she says. “We would end up talking for a really long time. And that kind of felt good; that did feel like I was helping to some degree because at least they had a space where they could talk.

“One [visitor] got emotional because he saw a copy of ‘The Hobbit’ that was the same exact edition that his father had inscribed to him as a gift,” she says. “It’s just stuff like that, you know?”

Buckley says the store is planning a grand opening event on March 15, which will feature the unveiling of its large main room with custom shelves, a large tree and art by Buckley’s brother, who is an artist based in Mexico City.

“There’s going to be oversized scissors and everything,” she laughs about the ceremony. “We’ll be ready to go. I’m so excited.”

Buckley, who grew up both in Mexico and California, went to high school in Riverside and has worked in a number of Southern California bookstores, including Borders, The Daily Planet, The Last Bookstore and Lost Books, before deciding it was time to start her own.

She says that Sierra Madre has been an ideal, welcoming place, recalling how a group of librarians from the Sierra Madre Public Library ventured down the street together to say hello.

“I was starstruck,” she says.

Buckley has also learned some local lore about her location: It was once a music store where it’s believed the Van Halen brothers got their first instruments.

“A customer actually had the receipt — the literal receipt. The dad, Jan Van Halen, bought the drum set and guitar for his kids here at 50 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., isn’t that crazy?”

And for now, she’s looking forward to making some history here herself.

”I love it. Like, closing up at night and just looking around at this – it’s such an amazing feeling,” she says. “This is such a great community.”

For more information, check out the store’s Bookshop.org site or Instagram.

She opened a bookstore in Sierra Madre. After the fires, she saw how it could help Orange County Register

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She opened a bookstore in Sierra Madre. After the fires, she saw how it could help

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