When Susanne Ward and her late partner Patrick Reilley moved to Rockland from California in 1991, they knew it wasn’t easy to make a living in midcoast Maine and they had to get creative.
“Two of the things we really missed were good used book stores and coffee houses. It just wasn’t a thing out here at all,” said Ward. “There weren’t many used book stores and there weren’t any used bookstore coffee houses out here. So we just thought, ‘What the heck? Let’s do it!’”
And with that, in the summer of 1992, Second Read Books and Coffee — the first espresso bar/bookstore/coffee house in Maine — opened its doors on Main Street in Rockland.
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