How the ‘scariest moment’ of this woman’s life prompted her to open a Jane Austen

Lisa Dukart, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Write a book. Sing lead in an Afropunk band. Be a professor. Open a bookstore.

Those are a few items on Charity Herndon’s bucket list, something she began seriously weighing last year when sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room after discovering a lump in her breast just weeks before her wedding.

After a slew of tests, she thought, “If this comes back positive and I’m going to be on this journey, what is one thing that I would regret not doing?”

She’d already checked off writing a book and decided: “It was opening a bookstore.”

Initially, the Gloucester County, New Jersey, resident thought she would pursue that dream after retirement, but in the wake of her breast cancer scare — which required surgery last month, but ultimately was not cancer