Local authors Sandra Bonura and Linda Moore talked about their books and writing strategies at the Cover to Cover Author’s Luncheon in Rancho Bernardo.
The 27th annual event at The Heights Golf Club was a fundraiser for the Poway-Penasquitos branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW). Proceeds from ission fees, silent auction bids and gift card sales were used for the organization’s Re-Entry Women’s Scholarships, which benefit women returning to college after an interruption in their education.
AAUW’s Poway-Penasquitos branch typically provides two to four scholarships each year, said Cover to Cover Chair Cathy Burciaga. Recipients are usually women who quit school to work full-time or to care for children or parents, she said.
“It’s for women who are returning to college after a hiatus that they’re forced to take due to other responsibilities,” Burciaga said. “Now they can go back to school and finish their degrees so they can move up in the world and earn better salaries. Oftentimes, they’re hampered financially so we’re here to help.”
For the May 17 event, Bonura brought copies of her books, “Empire Builder – John D. Spreckels and the Making of San Diego” and “The Sugar King of California – the Life of Claus Spreckels,” which she signed for attendees.
The Del Cerro resident spent her childhood in Coronado and works with the Coronado Historical Association as a docent.
After retiring as a professor at Chapman University in Orange County, Bonura, 70, said curiosity led her down the path of writing biographies. A family friend who worked as an archivist for Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla found letters in steamship trunks and showed them to Bonura.
After reading the letters that were discovered with scrapbooks and photo albums from the 1800s, Bonura was inspired to write “An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands.” The book, published in 2012, is based on letters Carrie Prudence Winter had written to her fiance, “Charlie.”
Bonura continued writing books related to Hawaii, including “Light in The Queen’s Garden: Ida May Pope, Pioneer for Hawai’i’s Daughters,” published in 2017. The book is based on Pope’s experiences in the late 1800s as a teacher at Kawaiaha’o Seminary boarding school for girls.
While researching the two books, Bonura said the name of John D. Spreckels kept reappearing in Winter’s and Pope’s letters. She continued researching the Spreckels family, including the German immigrant Claus Spreckels and his first son, John D. Spreckels. Eventually, Bonura served as the guest curator for the Coronado Historical Association’s 2018 exhibit, “John D. Spreckels: The Man/The Legacy.”
Bonura said her 2020 book, “Empire Builder” tells how Spreckels transformed the bankrupt village of San Diego into a thriving city. Along the way, he demanded advanced techniques of building construction, water supply management, and energy production, as well as improvements in transportation by ship, rail, electric streetcar and automobile, she said.
That prompted Bonura to write one of her most difficult books, which was published in 2024. “The Sugar King of California: The Life of Claus Spreckels,” tells the story of Spreckels’ arrival in the United States with only 75 cents in his pocket and his rise in the sugar production industry to become one of the richest Americans in history.
“His entrepreneurial drive and strategic decisions led to a sugar empire,” Bonura told attendees of the Cover to Cover luncheon. “He’s kind of spicy. In Hawaii, he’s either a saint or a sinner. My book gives a balanced view.”
Bonura also recently wrote a book about Henry G. Fenton, “Prairie to Prosperity: San Diego’s Pioneer Builder.” But for legal reasons, the book has not been published yet, she said.
Her next book, expected to be published in fall 2026, will tell the story of Belle Benchley, a woman who played a pivotal role in the development of the San Diego Zoo and became the world’s first female zoo director in 1927.
Bonura said Benchley was a divorced teacher who began working at the zoo as a secretary.
“Over 30 years she transformed a collection of cages into the world-renowned zoo it is today,” she said.
While answering questions at the end of her presentation, Bonura said she usually writes early in the morning starting at 4 a.m. She bases some of her research on digital archives and old newspaper articles, she said.
“I believe in using primary sources of information only,” said Bonura, who gives lectures on the importance of using a multitude of primary sources to gain perspective on historical events.
Also speaking was Linda Moore, a Mission Hills resident who wrote the novels, “Five Days in Bogota” and “Attribution.”
Moore, 77, said she was an art gallery owner who exhibited at the Feria Internacional de Arte in Bogota, Colombia in 1991.
“That experience became the spark of an idea for ‘Five Days in Bogota,’” Moore said. “Many scenes came from experiences on that trip, including meeting Colombian President Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994).”
“When I returned to San Diego after a successful art fair, I pondered how cavalier I had been to go to Bogota, one of the most dangerous cities in the world,” said Moore, who also signed copies of her books at the luncheon. “The experience led me to begin in-depth research about the political dynamics between the United States and Colombia and our mutual goal to control the drug trade and the mountains of money that benefited criminals.”
Her research and interviews with former State Department and Drug Enforcement Agency personnel who lived or worked in Colombia, or who were familiar with it in the early 1990s, contributed to her descriptions of the dynamics of various agencies and organizations in her book, she said.
Moore said she also showcased the beauty of Colombia and its people.
“Pre-Colombian history, including the little bells and clay whistles from that era, fascinates me,” she said. “The food, the music and the many talented visual artists make it easy to love this country and its capital city.”
Moore said she had written a number of nonfiction articles about art, artists, travel and hospital finance during her career as a gallery owner, traveler and writer, but it wasn’t until she was in her early 60s that she decided to write a novel.
Her novel-writing tips included starting with an idea that you are ionate about, be willing to make revisions throughout the writing process and be open to different possibilities for an ending.
“The journey to convert an idea into a story is never a straight line,” Moore told the luncheon attendees. “Stories are layered and complex in a dream-like way. You are inhabiting the world you created.”
