About the Author


Rika Hopewell is a semi-retired business school professor, former IT professional, and amateur singer/pianist living in the southeastern US. She is a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice, having read the book for the first of many times at the age of ten or eleven. Her favorite screen adaptation of the story is the 1995 miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, which she has watched at least as many times as she has read the novel.

Rika loves music of all kinds and also loves to travel. She still regrets that her mother wouldn’t let her wait in line to get Van Cliburn’s autograph after a concert in Washington, DC, when she was a ten-year-old piano student.

She is often asked if she has ever lived in San Francisco, New York, or Barbados, the primary locations in the story. She spent one year living part-time in Santa Clara, California (about 45 minutes south of San Francisco). Other than that, she has not lived in those places, but she has had the pleasure of spending time in each on multiple visits.

This is Rika’s first attempt at fiction writing. She originally started writing the story in 2003 in answer to a challenge from a friend, and found out that she loved writing. She loves it perhaps a little too much—it tends to take over her life, which caused her to take a very long hiatus from writing when the demands of her academic career interfered. Ironically, the COVID pandemic gave her the opportunity to complete the story.