SANTA ROSA --

Copperfield’s Books welcomes Santa Rosa author Jason Buchholz to Montgomery Village in celebration of his mesmerizing new novel - The Cartographer of Sands. 

Join us for a warm discussion followed by an audience Q&A and book signing. 

This is a free event, registration recommended.

Traveling across the landscapes of California, two brothers-a recent parolee and a Berkeley professor--go in search of their teenage sister who has vanished, looking for the reasons why she left home.

High in the hills of Berkeley, California, a father summons his two sons, Leonardo, a biology professor, and Gabriel, a recent parolee, and tasks them with locating their seventeen-year-old sister, Lenore, who has vanished, leaving a two-word note that simply reads: I'm okay.

The brothers' quests carry them in opposite directions--one northward to the Oregon border, the other southward to the Mexican border--as they search the length of California not just for their sister but for the reasons why she left home, reasons that will lead them into the heart of their mysterious family vocation of powerful healers.

In lyrical and precise prose, Buchholz conjures the lost horizons of the American West. The Cartographer of Sands charts the border territory--between the US and Mexico, between family members, between the ordinary and the mystical. Buchholz maps an undiscovered country of ancestral lineage, family connection, and existential revelation through characters that are at once familiar and profoundly mysterious.

Author: Jason Buchholz is the author of The Cartographer of Sands and A Paper Son, novels that examine family, migration, and the holes left behind when our loved ones go missing. His fictional worlds are at once recognizable and familiar, but brim with unseen possibilities and invitations to examine the hidden layers that can extend well beyond our everyday existences. He spent his childhood in Santa Rosa, and in both novels, California becomes a central character, shaping storylines with its landscapes, weather, and people.

He is the co-founder and co-owner of Collaborist, an editorial studio, and has worked as a ghostwriter, editor, and writing coach for two decades. Previous adventures in letters have included stints as a journalist and a travel writer. Elsewhere, he’s a judo instructor, a volunteer crisis counselor, and an outdoorsman. He holds a BA in psychology from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. He lives in northern California with his son and his daughter