About the Authors

Julia Park Tracey is an award-winning journalist, essayist and poet. She has written for and edited several newspapers and magazines in Northern California. Julia has written for Huffington Post, Salon, Paste, Scary Mommy, Thrillist, Redbook, Narratively, Oakland Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Insight, and many other publications in print and online. She writes about history, books, and the arts.

She is the author of three novels: Tongues of Angels, Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop, and Veronika Layne Has a Nose for News; two collections of women’s history: I’ve Got Some Lovin’ to Do: The Diary of a Roaring Twenties Teen, and Reaching for the Moon: More Diaries of a Roaring Twenties Teen, and a volume of poetry, Amaryllis: Collected Poems.

The Bereaved is a historical novel about the Orphan Train and the mothers left behind based on Tracey’s research into her grandfather’s past as an adopted child. In 1859, when her husband dies and her children become wards of a predator, Martha—bereaved and scared—flees their beloved country home taking the children with her to the squalor of New York City. But as a naive woman alone, preyed on by male employers, she soon finds herself nearly destitute. The Home for the Friendless offers free food, clothing, and schooling to New York’s street kids and Martha secures a place temporarily for her children there. When she returns for them, she discovers that the Society has indentured her two eldest out to work via the Orphan Train, and has placed her two youngest for adoption. The Society refusing to help and with the Civil War erupting around her, Martha sets out to reclaim each of them.

To schedule a book club visit with Julia or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist Susannah Kennedy was born in India before returning to the US. As an adult, Kennedy traveled extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East and India, settling for two years in Egypt before moving as a reporter to Dallas, Texas. At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology. She and her German husband raised three children in a thatched roof farmhouse in the German countryside. They now live in the Bay Area.

An award-winning memoir that reads like fiction, Reading Jane is a vivid study of narratives, the power of parenthood and what freedom looks like when we choose to examine the uncomfortable past.

At 75, narcissistic Jane chooses suicide though healthy and fit, leaving her only child, Susannah, with the unwelcome gift of 45 years of her mother’s hidden diaries. Daring to “read” Jane is like unlatching Pandora’s Box and Susannah finds herself on a riveting detective journey. In deciphering how Jane’s traumatic childhood later shaped the way she mothered, Susannah explores profound questions about how our parents’ damaging legacies can be transformed for the generations that follow.

To schedule a book club visit with Susannah or any of our authors on NovelNetwork:

Event Registration

Registration via Hook & Ladder is coming soon. Books and wine will be available for sale and signing at the event. Only books purchased at the event are eligible for signing.

About Hook & Ladder Winery

Hook & Ladder is an “estate” producer, specializing in small bottlings of Pinot Noir, “Old Vine” Zinfandel, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux-style blends sourced from the family’s sustainably-farmed vineyards in Russian River Valley and its sub-appellation, Chalk Hill. The winery also produces and sells estate-grown Olive Oil from trees grown at their Los Amigos Ranch.

About Melier

Luxury tastes shouldn’t be confined to luxury resorts. Book a Melier experience and enjoy private wine & culinary experiences from your home, office, or vacation rental. And when you book with Melier, you’re directly supporting the tastemakers who are bringing their creations to life.