Last month, I had a great time presenting my novel Dancing on the Brink of the World to the Philanthropic Educational Organization, Chapter GJ. What a fine group of interesting women involved in helping young women succeed in this world through scholarships, grants, and loans. The theme we focused on was women’s roles and duties in the past and their difficult, laborious lives. I set up on a table visuals, including a map from my novel and a steel engraving print of Yerba Buena Cove, to help my audience go back in time to the 1820s.
My novel is showing up on bookstore display tables in good company! Here’s my book at the awesome Sausalito Books by the Bay. I see it’s for sale in other countries too. Check out Hatchard’s Bookshop in London or Blackwells Bookstore in Oxford, UK. Grab a copy at your local bookstore.
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
Since childhood, once I learned to read, books and libraries were a magnet for me. I rode my bike three miles to our local library when I was ten and would stay for hours dipping into any book that caught my attention. When I moved to San Francisco, the first thing I did was get a library card, after getting my driver’s license. When I moved to Sausalito, I joined the library.
After my husband and I bought a house in Larkspur, I joined the local library board, serving for fifteen years. During those years, the Board began research on a purpose-built library building. I’m thrilled the new library, now under construction, is scheduled to open in 2026, and I plan to visit it when I travel there to see old friends.
I always visit bookstores and libraries on my vacations. I adored walking around Blackwells in Oxford and Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and bought many books to take home. Libraries in European castles, monasteries, universities, and mansions store so many treasured books. The scholarship, human insights, adventures, and experiences locked in these homes for books remind me of the saying, “Knowledge is power.” Those depositories of knowledge had sometimes spread ideas that overturned the balance of history. I hope you use and support and treasure your local library.
The official publication date is January 13, 2026. Three cheers! My novel is now available for pre-order online. You can find it listed on Simon & Schuster, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Bookshop, and Indigo. Be sure to look for my pen name – Marianne T. Rafter.
In author Tamim Ansary’s review of my novel, he wrote, “Rafter’s novel feels as solidly real as my world, because she takes me into it with such a wealth of historical details, I feel up close to the everyday life of these people, in this time and this place.” I hope you will order my book, and as you read it, be absorbed into Captain Richardson’s time, too.
Actually there are two memorials to Captain Richardson’s life. A plaque listing events in his life is found on a sidewalk near the Sausalito harbor docks. I lived in Sausalito for a while and yet never noticed this marker. Linda H., a dear friend interested in my writing, discovered it. Another marker honors Captain Richardson’s memory in Gabrielson Park near the Sausalito Ferry terminal. Two of the captain’s descendants from his daughter Mariana Richardson Torres, Davis Lewis and his sister Letitia Davis, attended the 1999 dedication ceremony for the monument. The memorial is fitting especially since Richardson’s gravestone, somewhere on a San Rafael hillside, can no longer be found. These two markers are important reminders of Captain Richardson’s life and work on San Francisco Bay. Many thanks to my niece Liz Lowry for the photograph of the anchor and marker. The beginning of the inscription on the plaque reads:
William A. Richardson
Founder of Sausalito
1795-1856
In 1822 English-born Richardson arrived in San
Francisco Bay on the whaler Orion.
I won’t quote the rest of the text on this tribute to Richardson because it contains spoilers. I would rather you read my book when it is published to discover the whole story about this remarkable and somewhat forgotten man and his courageous family.
When I started researching California history, Captain William A. Richardson’s name surfaced several times connected to the founding of the city of San Francisco and the city of Sausalito. Streets were named after him as well as Richardson’s Bay near Sausalito. He was the first mate on a British whaler that sailed into San Francisco Bay in the early 1820s in need of water, wood, and provisions. A romantic story was attached to his jumping ship to stay in Alta California. As a result, his life in California revolved around the sea, sailing ships, and the beautiful, charming Spanish daughter of the commandant in charge of the San Francisco Presidio, the Spanish fort that Mexico then governed. An ambitious, driven man, he built ships and adobe houses, sailed north, south, and west, became a ranchero, and was the friend of many famous historical people.
