Here’s what’s on the Left Coast Writers® agenda in September:
Folks, check it out. YES, I have a new book just out: POST-Apocalyptic Valentine (7.13 Books pub date SEPTEMBER 3rd and event scheduled for SEPTEMBER 14th at Book Passage in Corte Madera), but THERE ARE OTHER AMAZING BOOK DEBUTS that we at Left Coast Writers are celebrating this month!
Like Roccie Hill‘s award winning novel, THE BLOOD of MY MOTHER, which we’ll be celebrating at Book Passage Bookstore as well. I had the opportunity to work with Roccie on this book and can attest to its unarguable power and relevance.
Join us for that!
September 7 (Sat) at 2 pm:
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925
AND please spread the word!
In her latest book, THE BLOOD OF MY MOTHER, award winning novelist Roccie Hill shares a diligently researched and heartfelt story with ties to her own past that lights up the lives of tri-racial isolates in the American South and West and traces
the drama of untangling family, love, adversity and the wounds of intense prejudice.
This story starts in 1827, when the promised land, now Texas, was part of Mexico. Refugee families “traveled in packs like hounds for survival.” A family of refugees walks a thousand miles to a new home where they’ve been told they can find land to farm. One of them, Eliza, is a young mixed-race girl (a melungeon), and the great-great-grandmother of Roccie Hill, author of The Blood of My Mother.
“This isn’t a novel told by some white guy who read a history textbook. It’s not about big moments of battle courage. It’s about events you’ve never heard of, like the Runaway Scrape: thousands of settlers walking across Texas in the rain for weeks to escape, hundreds dying along the way. It’s about white children kidnapped by Comanches who never wanted to be “rescued” because their indigenous culture made so much more sense. It’s about the very personal moments during the clash of indigenous, Mexican, and white cultures on the prairie. It’s about women who persevered because in the end, that’s the only privilege they are ever granted: the right to persevere.”
—Jesse Kornbluth (excerpted from a review in Head Butler)
Robbed by fate and evil doers of everything except her ferocious spirit, Eliza fights for her own space in the pitiless frontier that will become the state of Texas. Combining lyrical prose and non-stop action, Roccie Hill conjures an unforgettable character who somehow triumphs over nearly unthinkable privations. Hill’s Eliza springs to life as a true American original. I could not stop reading.
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, NYT Bestselling author & Oprah Book Club Inaugural Choice The Deep End of the Ocean
Lonesome Dove meets Where the Crawdads Sing. I simply could not put this novel down. Vividly written, The Blood of My Mother is a gripping saga about a perilous time in our nation’s history and a woman who survived it against all odds. It is a novel about how love and hope transcend man’s inhumanity to man. I was pulled deeply into the story and was held there until the very last page.
—Patricia Wood, author of Lottery, shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction
Roccie Hill is an American writer and a native Californian who received her MA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. After graduate school, she moved to Salinas where she worked with César Chavez as part of the United Farm Workers union. She lived in England and France for a total of 15 years, working for several nonprofits, including the Official French Committee for the Statue of Liberty celebrations in Paris. She also produced a variety of short films and celebrity/royal events in England. Upon her return to California, she continued as a non-profit executive as the Executive Director of Guide Dogs of the Desert, as well as the Chair of the California Association of Non-profits Public Policy Council.
Roccie has published three novels, several short stories, a play, exhibited her photography, and studied the history and genealogy of US borderlands cultures in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. She is a professional genealogist, with a focus on Native American ancestry. A former Board Member of both the Palm Springs United Nations Association and the Palm Springs Writers Guild, and current Board Member of the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America-Southern California, she is a recipient of The President’s Lifetime Achievement Award (Barack Obama) for Volunteer Service (2016). The Blood of My Mother, Roccie’s third novel, is inspired by the life of Roccie’s great-great grandmother and Texas pioneer, Eliza Green Moore.
Roccie was recently awarded the 2024 Willa Literary Award. Named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Willa Cather, it recognizes yearly the best literature, featuring women’s or girl’s stories set in the North American West.