Left Coast Writers®
Saturday June 13th, 2026 — 2 PM
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
Join us at an event hosted by Book Passage and organized by Left Coast Writers®
1883, San Antonio—where the dying frontier collides with industrial ambition…
John Ives, the privileged son of a powerful tycoon, is sent to oversee his family’s ventures in the brutal swamps of Tampico, Mexico. But a fateful return to Texas sets him on a collision course with Stella Moore, a fiercely independent schoolteacher searching for her missing sister, and Peter Olenbush, a reckless ally with his own secrets.
As corruption festers in the shadows of progress, John’s quest for redemption is haunted by his family’s dark legacy and a murder that refuses to stay buried. In a city simmering with violence, greed, and betrayal, John must navigate the dangerous intersections of love, guilt, and survival. For fans of sweeping historical dramas and morally complex characters, The Wounds of My Father is a masterful tale of ambition, redemption, and the devastating cost of secrets.
Praise for Roccie Hill
Roccie Hill
First place winner in the WILLA Awards 2024 from Women Writing the West for The Blood of My Mother
‘I found myself totally absorbed in the story and read the entire book in just a few days.’ — Reader Review
‘I loved this book from the very first page, so hard to put down once I started.’ — Reader Review
‘This is a book that will pull readers in and keep them on the edge of their seats. The characters are vividly portrayed, and the narrative is beautifully written. I simply could not put it down.’ – Patricia Wood, Author of Lottery
‘It is Hill’s skill as a wordsmith together with her knowledge as historian and genealogist that creates a gripping story conveyed in evocative prose. This is a page turner that is at once a crime novel, a vividly poetic chronicle of life in a rapidly changing America, and a comment on where and how our lives and those of our ancestors, take us.’ — Mary Ann De Vlieg, Secretary General Emeritus of International European Theater Meeting
‘Roccie Hill is an exceptional writer with an unerring sense of time and place. You mustn’t miss her latest, The Wounds of My Father, which will transport you to turn-of-the-century San Antonio, where American industrialists clash with frontier settlers. Highly recommended!’ — Eric Maisel, Author of Choose Your Life Purposes
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Roccie Hill is an American writer and a native Californian. She received her BA in Philosophy and History at UCLA, and her MA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where her short stories appeared regularly in the literary quarterly. After graduate school, she moved to Salinas, where she worked with César Chavez as part of the United Farm Workers union. She lived and worked in Paris for 8 years as a journalist, a teacher of Creative Writing, a Marketing Officer for the Statue of Liberty Centennial, and as a mother (her most important job ever).
She also lived in England for 8 years, mostly in Gloucestershire, where she worked for non-profits and produced a variety of short films and celebrity/royal events.
Marianna Marlowe is a Latina writer exploring issues surrounding gender identity and cultural hybridity. She holds a Ph.D. in Literary Studies as well as a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Washington, and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Author of two memoirs published by She Writes Press, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she is at work on a third book.
When Carmela Donitella, youngest of a large Sicilian-American family, discovers someone is blackmailing her father who wants to open an orphanage, she enlists the help of her four older sisters, aka the Sister Mob.
literary anthologies on France, Italy, Mexico, and Greece. She has written for many publications, including National Geographic Traveler, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times and her short fiction has placed in the Kurt Vonnegut, Zoetrope, and Katherine Anne Porter contests. 
PROLES themes resonate today: 
“A disturbingly topical tale about a young spiritual drifter (Simon Bussbaum), thrown in with a group of disenfranchised males brutalized by cultural, educational, personal, and political neglect. “Proles” refers, of course, to “proletariat” and that’s not the only connection to “1984”, Orwell’s brilliant and now-we-can-say prescient masterpiece.
Joan Virginia Allen doesn’t just talk about dynamic aging—she lives it. As a retired elder law and estate planning attorney turned dynamic aging life coach, memoirist, and publisher of the online “Dynamic Aging 4 Life Magazine,” Joan is committed to changing the narrative around aging.
biomechanist Katy Bowman—a groundbreaking work that has helped people worldwide to experience greater physical mobility and vitality as they age.
Laurie McAndish King is an award-winning travel writer and photographer with an eye for the quirky. Her subjects include 20-foot-long Australian earthworms, an Ivy League astrophysicist’s explanation of how flying saucers are powered, and finding the perfect site for watching eagle sex. King’s essays and photography have appeared in Smithsonian magazine, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Lonely Planet’s The Kindness of Strangers, and other magazines and literary anthologies. Her three books of travel essays—insightful, poignant and often quite funny—are available from Book Passage: 
Join us as we celebrate the life and work of writer, traveler and centenarian Ethel Mussen, who passed away this year, a few years ahead of her 104th birthday. Some of us had the pleasure of her friendship, of knowing and traveling the world with her. Many of us have been delighted by Ethel’s travel tales published in the Wanderland Writers anthologies and elsewhere.
We have fond memories of Ethel Mussen, the world-traveling centenarian who—when she wasn’t out and about sharing her life stories, her wisdom and her the wide-eyed enthusiasm for ideas, people, places, good works and life in general— lived high on a hill above Berkeley.
our lives. Brilliant. Highly recommended.”