Sonoma County’s longtime newspaper columnist and regional historian Gaye LeBaron and co-author, writer Bart Casey have announced the publication of a new history book entitled The Wonder Seekers of Fountaingrove.
The history of the Fountaingrove area of Sonoma County, is rich with tales and characters of a bygone era. Wonder Seekers begins in 1875 and culminates with the devastating Tubbs Fire of 2017, in which all traces of previous incarnations vanished.
The book introduces Thomas Lake Harris, a preacher, prophet and poet who founded the Brotherhood of the New Life. His successor, Kanaye Nagasawa, a young Japanese samurai, forged a lasting connection between Santa Rosa and Kagoshima, Japan while becoming a renowned winemaker. Another Harris disciple, Laurence Oliphant, whose colorful life was explored in a previous book by co-author Casey, also plays a role.
The Wonder Seekers of Fountaingrove will be available in October of 2018 at local stores including Copperfield’s and Corrick’s
About the authors
LeBaron is a journalist and historian who started as an intern at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in 1954, became a full-time reporter in 1957 and is still writing bi-monthly columns. She has also written two history volumes about Sonoma County.
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 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.
Casey discovered Thomas Lake Harris on the poetry shelves of the Harvard library as a student. 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 co-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.”
— submitted by Rhoann Ponseti
