Bill Petrocelli was a tough San Francisco attorney. He met his wife, Elaine, 30-odd years ago when he served on the board of the school where she was teaching. Not long after they started dating, Bill had to shut down the school when a scandal erupted over a high-level employee keeping two sets of books. The move could have been the death knell of the idealism that had led Elaine into teaching. Instead, Bill asked Elaine, "What are you passionate about?"
"Books," she said. "This may be a really dumb idea, but I've always wanted to be a bookseller."
Not only did Bill encourage her to follow her passion, they got married.
Twenty-nine years later, Elaine is one of the swelling legions of small-business owners -- the majority of whom are women. She is the longstanding proprietress of Book Passage in the hills of Marin County, where she employs a happy tribe of 60.
Elaine never seems to stop smiling. She wasn't able to change the world, but she has done the next best thing. You see her passion when Elaine glides through her bookstore on little sandaled feet, her smoky green eyes darting right and left, not missing a trick, appriaising everything from the point of view of the book buyer. Her silver hair frames her face in soft waves, everything very natural. Bill, tall and muscular, backs her up with a solid masculine presence. "Elaine is always three steps ahead of me," he says without a trace of tattered ego.
As Elaine built her business, her husband was also her lawyer. He listened to Elaine complain that the discounts publishers gave the chains were surely more generous than those given to a store like hers. Bill began to investigate. The couple became active in the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and ended up participating in a fair trade lawsuit filed against two major publishers. "We've managed to stop a few unfair practices," says Bill. "It's a constant battle. It's like the Hundred Years' War."
As Bill spent more and more time working in the bookstore, he noticed that everyone on the staff showed up there in a happy mood. "It was totally different than when I went to my law office and everyone showed up angry." He was hungering for a change in midlife; why not join his wife's business?
Well, there could have been hundreds of reasons. "I was scared he might come in and take over," Elaine admits, adding, with her ready laughter, "or maybe we would fight. If you have a disagreement with your spouse and you're in business, you're likely to fight in front of 60 employees. Bill had to make himself valuable."
Her husband quickly proved himself useful by wielding spreadsheets and acting as the legal hammer behind Elaine's emollient public personality. "Now Bill is a seven-day-a-week guy," she says. "Sometimes I say to him, 'Go home!'
"I don't think there are too many couples who work together and are happy about it," Elaine continues. "But for us, it's better, because we're so involved. If I were married to someone who didn't share this passion of mine, there probably would be resentment. He'd say, 'She doesn't do anything all day except meet famous authors!'" As it is, Elaine reads a new book almost every night. "Bill and I read together," she clarifies. "It's something we enjoy doing together in the evening."
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