Seeking Refuge on the “Castle” Grounds

I’ve walked or biked past our local “castle” hundreds of times: Its Romanesque Revival campus perched on a hillside above my home town has a magical quality to it, particularly at dusk. In the days when our boys were reading J.K. Rowling’s books, it seemed as if Harry Potter might swoop through it spires any moment during a Quidditch match.

The San Francisco Theological Seminary

Only in recent years, as I began researching my new book, The White Devil’s Daughters, did I realize that “the castle” is where a key chapter in my book takes place. After the devastating earthquake and fires of San Francisco, the girls and women of the rescue home in San Francisco’s Chinatown  fled to the castle grounds, living lived in a barn on its grounds for a week.

I’ve written about the “castle,” or the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo (its real name) for this month’s issue of Marin Magazine. It was on the grounds of the Seminary where a large group from the Presbyterian Mission Home in Chinatown sought refuge from the disaster. And today, its library still holds century-old records of the home in Chinatown where thousands of women passed through on their way to freedom.

Here’s the story for Marin Magazine, along with some of the archival photographs from my book. The book launch party will take place on Thursday, May 16th, at Book Passage in Corte Madera, Ca.