New owners hope to write next chapter for beloved Benson bookstore

The wind might just sing once again in Benson.

Two years after the death of its charismatic curator, the Singing Wind Bookstore and ranch have been sold to a new owner who hopes to reopen one of the Southwest’s most unique literary landmarks.

“It’s just such a very cool little niche that I really want to keep going,” said Dr. Brian Costleigh, an East Coast oncologist who purchased the roughly 500-acre property about 50 miles southeast of Tucson in late October.

Winn Bundy opened her ranch-house bookstore in the early 1970s and ran it until she died in 2020 at the age of 90.

Though tucked away on a dirt road about two miles north of Interstate 10, the place developed a worldwide following — mostly by word of mouth — for its inventory of interesting titles and its generous support of Arizona authors.

Over the decades, Bundy and her store were profiled in a host of national publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Time, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and National Geographic Traveler.

Singing Wind carried more than 10,000 books on Southwestern history and literature, music, art, architecture, regional and national politics, culture, religion, mysteries, women’s writings, mythology, religion and sports.

When Bundy ran out of space on the shelves that her husband, Bob, built by hand from local mesquite, she would stash books anywhere else she could.

“When we were taking care of my grandmother, we were finding books in places you would never expect to find them,” said Bundy’s granddaughter, Tasha. “There were books in basically every part of the house.”

The family tried to open the store back up after Winn Bundy died — sometimes by appointment or just whenever they happened to be at the ranch — but it never quite worked out, Tasha Bundy said.

“It was kind of too soon to reopen and hard to know what to do after my grandmother died,” she said. “It was hard to give it the time it needed and deal with everything else that was going on.”

Open or not, though, the customers kept coming. Tasha Bundy said anytime they were there at the house, at least one person a day would drive up wanting to browse through the shop. The only way to keep people out was to close the gate leading into the ranch.

Costleigh wasn’t really in the market for a bookstore. He said he owns some medical offices in Tucson with a friend who works with disabled veterans, and he initially went looking for ranch property in Southern Arizona to use as a retreat for her patients.

Seeing the Singing Wind property convinced him he needed to try his hand at agriculture.

Costleigh said he hopes to bring the property “back to its heyday, with cows and almond trees and everything.”

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He and his wife, Rene, are also committed to reopening the bookstore, which Bundy named, like the ranch itself, for the way the wind sings through the mesquite trees there.

“The goal is to keep the bookstore running similar to the way it was running in the past,” Costleigh said, while trying to “bring it into the modern era” with a few features Bundy long shunned — things like online sales, advertising and credit card readers.

It’s too soon to say when all of this might happen. Costleigh said they still need to complete an inventory of all the books that came with the ranch and develop a plan for the business.

“This is a totally new venture for me,” he said. “There’s just a lot of things to work through.”

The doctor who turns 60 this month admits he doesn’t know much about book sales or ranching, but he is “a fast learner” and his wife “knows how to sell,” he said.

Their timing is pretty good, too.

Tasha Bundy said the Costleighs showed up just as the family was taking the ranch off the market, after rejecting a handful of offers that were “way too low” or involved plans to dramatically redevelop the property.

“They are kind of dream buyers for us,” she said. “It was the needle in the haystack that we were trying to find.”

But it’s also been bittersweet.

The Singing Wind Ranch was in the Bundy family for 66 years. Bob and Winn Bundy bought the place along the San Pedro River in 1956, after his job with Hughes Aircraft brought them to Tucson from Los Angeles.

Their kids grew up there, ranching and riding and farming, and Tasha Bundy did, too. She said she lived at the ranch with her grandparents for a while when she was a kid, and it was a little like being inside a fairy tale. “I had a pony, and I was surrounded by books,” she said.

The family is still getting used to the idea that Singing Wind belongs to someone else now. Two months later, Tasha Bundy still gets emotional talking about it.

“It’s very strange to lose something that is such a big part of our lives,” she said, her voice cracking, “but it seems like it’s in good hands.”