Author Event at the Library

Griffin Bay Bookstore and the San Juan Island Library are co-sponsoring an evening with Northwest writer Laura Kelly Robb and her first novel, China Rock, on Sunday, June 9, 7:00 pm at the San Juan Island Library, 1010 Guard Street.

China Rock is a coming-of-age novel set in the San Juan Islands during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The author intertwines the fictional history of Pop Mohan and his seven children with the challenges and rewards of island life during hardscrabble times. Pop’s disappearance off the coast of Vancouver Island leaves Augie, his oldest son, as head of the rambunctious family. It’s left to Augie to unravel a mystery. What connection do the corpses of a young Chinese couple have with Pop’s fate? This is a story that will appeal to middle readers and young adults. Anyone who likes to read about the San Juan Islands, whatever age, will be swept into the lore of smuggling and a bygone era.

Laura’s presentation Sunday night will also include a discussion of history as inspiration and the ways to manage history in fiction. She will talk about the particular challenges a fiction writer faces when delving into history, and taking up tales and characters that are fascinating to us. Writing historical fiction means being faithful to facts, being accurate while at the same time, striving to capture the color and flavor of an era. She’ll refer to a number of her favorite works of historical fiction.

About the Author
Laura Kelly Robb has lived in Seattle for 30 years. China Rock is her first novel. A longtime teacher as well as frequent visitor to the San Juan Islands, she discovered the San Juan Historical Museum on one trip and was enthralled by the museum’s exhibit about smuggling. This sparked her imagination and so did “the legend of China Rock that I had heard,” she says.

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