Author Description

Journalist and historian Gaye LeBaron first learned of Thomas Lake Harris and his Brotherhood in the 1960s when the deserted winery, champagne cellars and empty mansion still stood at the old Fountaingrove. She was to learn that there were stories to be told swirling all around that hilltop, including the adventures of a young Samurai that forged "the Japanese connection" with Santa Rosa.Author Bart Casey stumbled on Thomas Lake Harris on the poetry shelves of the Harvard library when he was a student there. Curiosity led him to the many-layered story of Laurence Oliphant, a Harris disciple, and the other "characters" on this journey to Utopia. His book, The Double Life of Laurence Oliphant, was published in 2015.The two authors' first meeting, at LeBaron's archives in the Schulz Library's Special Collections at Sonoma State University, resulted in a five-year collaboration and their mutual effort to tell "the whole story."