The Short-Meriner Family: The History of a Pioneer Marin County Family (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781500968373)

Brian Crawford is a retired computer programmer living in Marin County, California, with his wife and son. In addition to several collections of short fiction and a series of memoirs about his hippie days, he has written Toki, a historical novel about the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga. He has also reprinted a number of out-of-print books about Pacific exploration. His fiction has been published in the print magazines Bust-Out Stories and Paradox Historical Fiction, and the online journals Slow Trains, e-clips, Clean Sheets, Sedona's Attic, and Oysters and Chocolate, where his story The Heat won a Grand Prize. His short-short story Heart to Heart won Honorable Mention in the Whim's Place 2006 Flash Fiction contest, and The Find won Second Prize. Born in Ohio in 1947, Crawford attended Antioch College but dropped out and went to Haight-Ashbury for the Summer of Love. After several years and many adventures on the road, he joined a group that bought a schooner in Nova Scotia and Crawford served as Second Officer, sailing it down the East Coast. Later he went to Tonga in the South Pacific, where he met his future wife Linda. He joined an Australian nuclear protest yacht bound to French Polynesia to anchor at ground zero. The mission was aborted, and Crawford helped sail the yacht through Fiji, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and down the coast of Australia, where he served as navigator in the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. He returned to the US in 1974, married Linda, and became a computer programmer in San Diego and later San Francisco, where they had their son Nathan in 1988. He enjoys sailing, hiking, kayaking, geocaching, genealogy, and early music. He is a volunteer with the San Anselmo Open Space Committee, the Friends of Faudé Park, the Friends of Sorich Park, and is chairman of the Sorich Park Area Residents and the San Anselmo Trails Subcommittee.