Bay Lands

The Frozen River goes West: After inheriting a rancho in 1874, a young Californio woman takes on the slave traffickers and robber barons of Gilded Age San Francisco who covet her family’s prime Bay Area real estate.

San Francisco Peninsula, 1874: Old California collides with the Industrial Age when twenty-year-old Mexican Irish mestiza Marisol Griffin inherits a failing rancho after the death of her grandmother, a legendary healer. Overnight, Mari is thrust into unfamiliar roles: midwife, ranch boss, and defender of her family lands from greedy, powerful men. To save her rancho, she forms an unlikely alliance of women—including an elite socialite and an escaped Chinese slave—and takes on the robber barons transforming San Francisco into a Gilded Age empire. Their fight draws them into the dangerous underbelly of the city, where financial fraud, trade in opium and slaves, and unchecked ambition threaten everything they love.

Bay Lands brings to life historically real, gritty heroes and fabulously wealthy financial titans locked in an epic power struggle. Inspired by Juana Briones, Leland Stanford, William Ralston, and Ah Toy, among others, Bay Lands thrusts readers into the maelstrom of immigration pressures, new technologies, and unbridled greed that changed lives and legacies forever in the late 1800s. Combining page-turning adventure with literary depth, Bay Lands is a sweeping story of women, land, and resistance at the birth of modern California.