We Gambled Our Future: Historia de dos Caminantes
She was Cochabamba's first woman architect. He had just left the seminary after twelve years, arriving in Los Angeles with $500 in his pocket and no map for what came next. They met in Cochabamba briefly, unexpectedly, and something shifted in both of them that neither of them quite had words for.
They agreed on the terms before they began: if it did not work out, they would part as friends. But they would give it everything.
They stayed together for forty years.
The Story
We Gambled Our Future: Historia de dos Caminantes is the memoir of María Cristina López Gandarillas-Page, written, she tells us from the very first page, for the grandchildren she and her late husband Bill never had the chance to introduce to each other.
It is a love story, yes. But it is also something rarer: a portrait of two people who built their values from scratch. Not from religion or tradition, but from respect, honesty, humor, and a shared appetite for the next horizon. They chose camping over hotels, picnics over restaurants, and adventure over comfort. They raised two daughters to do the same.
The book spans continents and generations. Bill grew up in the Irish-American neighborhoods of New York, one of six children, and spent twelve years in the Maryknoll Foreign Mission Society before setting out to discover who he was outside of institutional life. María Cristina grew up in Cochabamba, Bolivia, shaped by the 1952 revolution, early independence, and the conviction that the impossible was only difficult. She became Cochabamba's first woman architect, then left for Paris, then California, arriving with $300 and a willingness to risk everything on a life she could not have planned.
What unfolds between them is history made intimate: family genealogies woven together with personal letters, childhood memories, and the voices of daughters, nieces, and nephews who knew Bill and María Cristina as fixtures of warmth and laughter in their lives. Underneath all of it is the quiet, stubborn truth of a love that deepened every year.
We Gambled Our Future is for anyone who has ever loved someone from a different world, built a family across cultures, or wondered what story they will leave behind.
From the Introduction
In one of his Valentine's cards, Bill wrote to María Cristina:
Your love means more and more as time goes by. When we first fell in love, all I wanted was to be with you. All I needed was your smile and your love to make me happy. I thought it would always stay that way. But everything changes, and I am glad, because when we first fell in love, I could not have known that the best was yet to come, that I could be even happier or love you even more, but I do. It is a bliss being with you. Bill.
About the Author
María Cristina López Gandarillas-Page practiced architecture in Bolivia before building a life with her husband Bill and their two daughters in California. Now living in Southern Oregon, she wrote this memoir so her grandchildren could know the life she and their Abuelo built together — and the people they were before those grandchildren arrived to light the path forward.
The Making of This Book
We Gambled Our Future is a memoir woven through with Spanish, Quechua, and the particular texture of a life lived across two cultures. It required editorial and design work that could hold all of that without flattening it: the family genealogies that open the book, Bill's own written reflections, the afterword told in the voices of their daughters, and a cover built around an original watercolor illustration.
A Note from María Cristina:
Julie transformed my manuscript from a rough draft into a beautiful memoir. While I initially just wanted to know if my story made sense, her insightful editing exceeded all expectations. My intuition to hire her was absolutely correct.
I am profoundly grateful for her kindness and the deep care she took with my story. She guided me through the entire journey with such patience, working closely with me to polish the writing without ever losing my voice. She coached me through every step, making sure I truly understood- and was empowered by -the entire process.
If you are looking for a trustworthy and caring editor, Julie is that person. She is an exceptional editor who invests her heart into writing your story.
We Gambled Our Future is available beginning May 3, 2026.
Your Story Deserves the Same Care
If someone in your life has lived a story this full, and you have been waiting for the right moment to help preserve it, we would love to talk.
