Before there was a Silicon Valley, there was a seemingly bucolic agricultural town of San Jose that inspired to be a rival of San Francisco. Just as it began to prosper, an event dampened its reputation. St. James Park investigates this event in what became known as ‘San Jose's shame.’
It starts when a prominent department store heir is kidnapped in 1933 under suspicious circumstances, the FBI sends cynical agent Louis Cooper to investigate. Local bootlegger Angelo Gumina and labor activist Victoria Trinchero begin their own inquiries and what they find is a seedy alliance of business leaders, city officials, and organized crime. When the kidnappers are caught, this alliance is complicit as a mob is formed bent on violent retribution.
Based on actual events, the novel is a vivid portrait of San Jose's labor unrest, government corruption, and anti-immigrant racism during the Great Depression.
Before there was a Silicon Valley, there was a seemingly bucolic agricultural town of San Jose that inspired to be a rival of San Francisco. Just as it began to prosper, an event dampened its reputation. St. James Park investigates this event in what became known as ‘San Jose's shame.’
It starts when a prominent department store heir is kidnapped in 1933 under suspicious circumstances, the FBI sends cynical agent Louis Cooper to investigate. Local bootlegger Angelo Gumina and labor activist Victoria Trinchero begin their own inquiries and what they find is a seedy alliance of business leaders, city officials, and organized crime. When the kidnappers are caught, this alliance is complicit as a mob is formed bent on violent retribution.
Based on actual events, the novel is a vivid portrait of San Jose's labor unrest, government corruption, and anti-immigrant racism during the Great Depression.
Author’s Note
My mother grew up a few blocks from St. James Park. She attended a nearby public elementary school, an all-girls Catholic high school, and, for some time, San Jose Teachers College. She told me stories of her experiences growing up in San Jose: how the valley had changed, how the town grew to be a city. She loved her hometown.
But every so often, my mother would recount the events that unfolded one shameful night in St. James Park in the fall of 1933. She was seventeen at the time, one of many witnesses to crimes that made national headlines and ultimately went unpunished. Her persistent but jagged memories of St. James Park were the inspiration for this novel.
Prologue
San Jose existed long before there was a phenomenon called Silicon Valley. The valley had always been desirable for its sunny climate, agricultural bounty, available timber, and constant source of fresh water. After the Spaniards arrived, San Jose was established in 1777 as the first pueblo in what was known as Alta California. When Americans invaded less than a century later, the town was celebrated as the state’s first capital until the newly formed California legislature decided to move it elsewhere.
San Jose had promise, but other cities swiftly gained prominence. The furor for gold created wealth and fame for San Francisco, fifty miles to the north, and Sacramento was eventually chosen as the state capital in recognition of its proximity to the mines. San Jose remained on the periphery, concentrating on its fruit-bearing orchards as well as its vineyards—until most of the latter succumbed to the phylloxera epidemic in the 1890s. After the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco gained new celebrity as “the City that Knows How,” becoming the mercantile hub of the West, while San Jose was doomed to a less elegant sobriquet: “the Prune Capital of the World.”
San Jose continued to capitalize on its orchards, eventually becoming the largest canning and dried-fruit packing center in the world. By the early twentieth century, thirty-eight canneries and thirteen packing plants were the economic engine that enabled the town to bloom again. With a population swelling to 57,000, San Jose was too big to be called rural but too spread out to be urban. The city built up its compact downtown to create civic pride and promoted a new identity as “the Garden City.”
During the Prohibition era, San Jose gained yet another moniker: “the Wettest Town in California.” While savvy businessmen exploited the wealth to be made in controlling liquor and other illicit pursuits, tensions rose between the Drys and the Wets, between ethnicities and religions, between the lawful and the unlawful. The economic depression of the 1930s exacerbated the general unrest. Jobs disappeared, and for those who found employment in the fruit orchards and canneries, wages were at rock bottom. Beleaguered workers in San Jose began to fight back.
1
November 1933
A dozen or so activists attended the local Monday-night meeting, mostly men, some wearing overalls, some in floppy suits. They sat in a loose circle on wooden secondhand chairs scattered around the third-floor union hall in downtown San Jose. The windows were pushed partway open, but not enough air penetrated the musty, grimy room. The talk was about how to proceed after the local chapter’s downtown demonstration earlier in the week. As usual, not everyone agreed on what to do next. Tempers flared as the sun began to set.
“If they want to fight, we fight,” someone said.
“You don’t understand. That’s exactly what they want,” said another.
“The bosses are itching to shut us down!”
“Make us wage slaves.”
“The cannery workers are ready to strike this time. We need to shut them all down,” cried Sara Chambers, a slender blond woman in her early thirties wrapped in a cranberry crepe dress. She spoke calmly and deliberately in a high-pitched Southern lilt. The imposing and impeccably dressed woman was a familiar face at these meetings. She was the only other woman in the room besides Victoria Trinchero, who had become involved with the labor group after her first whiff of cannery work.
“We should negotiate,” said Guy Upton in his rumpled gray suit. He was the local business manager. Narrow-faced, he had a goatee and possessed intense eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses. “Make known our demands. Win over the people’s support. Continue to get their support and deal hard at the table.”
“Negotiation is over. You had your chance. How many more pamphlets and petitions can you pass around? We know the mayor won’t budge. None of them will.”
Victoria looked at the young man who had just spoken. He possessed an appealingly handsome face with curly dark hair, eyes that danced, a cleft chin, and a crooked smile. What was his name? . . . Schiavo? John Schiavo. He had only recently joined the group. He sat with his legs crossed at the ankles in his dungarees, arms crossed over a white shirt, a torn fedora resting on one of his knees.
“Look what they did last month. Tried to smoke us out,” someone else said.
“That ain’t gonna work. We’re not going away. The cannery workers will prevail,” said Bruguera. This fellow was brash, a dilettante, straight out of the university at Berkeley and very much aware of his good looks and charm. Had an opinion on everything. The week before, he’d asked Victoria to go out for a drink. She considered the offer, thought better of herself, and refused.
“We won the pear strike in the valley,” someone in the back said. Victoria didn’t recognize him. “How about that?”
“That was an isolated case,” Bruguera replied. “They want to come in for the kill.”
“Who are they, exactly?”
Bruguera held up his hand, counting off on his fingers as he recited: “The bosses. Their lackeys. The mayor. Ripley.”
There were murmurs of agreement. “We need to take more direct action,” another said.
Victoria rubbed her temples, growing more annoyed at the rhetoric being flung back and forth. Everyone knew that the mayor was a flunky who succumbed to those who held the power—and that was Ripley. Thomas Ripley dealt in real estate and was influential enough to manage those holding the reins of politics. A scumbag in a spiffy suit. He got what he desired without needing to hold an elected office. Or be held accountable.
Bruguera leaned to his left, toward Victoria. “How about one of you ladies go out in back and fetch me a cup of coffee?”
Without hesitation, Victoria flung her fountain pen at his face. He ducked, and ink splattered on the window behind him.
“Nice try, Vic darling. You want to take another shot?”
“Next time, I’ll aim lower to make sure you get my full impact.” She pointed at his crotch. “My mama taught me never to miss.”
Meanwhile, Sara folded her arms and let her gaze travel around the room. “Clearly, we have more issues to solve.”
Upton waved his hands. “Time to settle down. Let’s get back to business.”
The discussion continued until the church bells from nearby St. Joseph’s began to clang. It was six o’clock. A calling to the faithful or quitting time. For Victoria, it was the latter. She’d had enough of Bruguera—all of them, for that matter. After two hours of debate, they’d managed to agree to circulate a new demonstration pamphlet. They had not reached a consensus on its wording.
She was expected to dine with Amelia Gumina, her best friend, and did not wish to be late, again. Victoria hurried as well as she could down the steps, hampered by the dark stairwell. The one lobby bulb had burned out, and no one had bothered to replace it. Victoria emerged on Santa Clara Street and looked up at the deepening blue sky. The streetlights glistened with the first drops of rain. People scurried along the sidewalks, some leaving work to catch the trolley home, others arriving to grab a double feature at the California Fox. A pair of teenagers laughed as they precariously dangled their ice cream cones bought at O’Neill’s, a shop around the corner.
Victoria walked toward Rosen’s Department Store, where Santa Clara and Market Streets intersected in the heart of downtown. The lights from within the store still glowed brightly, but one of the clerks had just turned the sign, signaling Rosen’s was now closed. Another clerk had come out to help an elderly lady with her purchases into a waiting sedan. Victoria hurried by them and toward Lightston Alley, an odd afterthought of a street that served as a one-lane exit from Rosen’s parking lot, which was tucked behind another building and reserved for esteemed customers. The dim alley also provided a shortcut to the trolley she needed to take to get to the Gumina residence.
There was one car in the lot. Someone was walking toward the driver’s side of the vehicle. His outline was unmistakable: The scion of San Jose—Michael Rosen, heir apparent to Rosen’s Department Store. The owner was an immigrant of Jewish descent who through decades had transformed his dry goods and clothing store into an extensive emporium filled with everything a workingman might require and a fawning capitalist might want. The father, Alexander, was decent. His son was something else. Raised in luxury. Rejected by Stanford University because he was deemed insufficiently Anglo-Saxon. Rejoiced by the Jesuits at the all-male University of Santa Clara. Michael had graduated months earlier and was now employed at his father’s department store, learning the ropes of his eventual destiny.
When Michael was young, there was a rumor that he had been selected to pose as one of the cherubs that now adorned St. Joseph’s ceiling, painted by an Italian artist. Every time Victoria attended Sunday mass, she would look up, trying to figure out which one was Michael.
The former cherub was still blond and curly-haired but had a decidedly secular flair for the cards and the booze and the women who enjoyed those pursuits. He was a regular on the society pages of the San Jose Mercury-Herald. In short, Michael Rosen represented the privileged. Nobody should be that spoiled. Especially these days.
The younger Rosen was about to climb into his Studebaker roadster as Victoria approached. She was ten yards away and despite the shadowy light could not help but notice his patented smile. The smirk that would melt the hearts of most females aged thirteen to eighty in this town, though Victoria was not swayed.
He noticed her and only slowed slightly. “Victoria, it’s been a while. Good to see you this evening. I’m sorry, but I must be off. I must pick up my father.”
“Really? I thought you’d be going elsewhere,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to your dance?”
Michael laughed. “The dance will have to wait.” He gave her a quick nod. “Unless you’re interested in joining me later for a quick one?”
He didn’t wait for her response but quickly climbed into his sedan, closing the door behind him.
Victoria spared him an annoyed glance before continuing her quick march to the trolley, where she joined the throng of boarding passengers. That was the last time she ever saw Michael Rosen.
As John Doll’s debut historical fiction, St. James Park, opens, the sun sets over San Jose in November 1933, the Prohibition era, as disgruntled CalPak No. 39 cannery employees assemble in a grubby room to organize another strike to unionize, knowing they face opposition from shady but influential people grounded in politics, management, law enforcement, real estate, and some dabbling in crossover interests. As Victoria leaves to join her friend Amelia, Michael Rosan, a Jew and heir to his father’s department store, approaches her, which falsely links her to Rosen’s disappearance. Meanwhile, Thomas Ripley, a realtor, but powerful player, and the County Sheriff Elmore Ewing see outsiders as elephants in the room. “We made the land prosper. We earned it, fair and square” (20). They envision a different landscape when Prohibition ends and incline to position the odds in their favors.
Others also have ambitions. Instead of finishing college, Amelia wants to join the “father’s business” (7), a guarded illegal drinking hole. Winston Richter “refused to slave once again in his father’s bakery” (31), and The Committee for Public Safety dangles a chance for acceptance into law school. However, “Full initiation is dependent upon how well you perform” (34), and they do not refer to academic performance. Bureau Agent Louis Cooper, the outsider, aspires to solve Rosen’s kidnapping, shoving nothing under the rug, an objective not shared by everyone.
The weather grows more ominous alongside the plot progression. “They [the leaves] swirled about before reaching the ground [. . .] Thick, heavy gray clouds hovered above” (78). Characters do not follow the plans, so situations go awry. After a few drinks, people tell tales they should not divulge. Others, not performing as expected in their professional roles, purposely create confusion. As a result, people do not know who to trust. They doubt even their friends and friends.
The novel does not include a love interest outside of the family structure, but sporadic graphic language and scenes may make it inappropriate for very young adults. However, adult mystery and crime lovers will enjoy the read. The multi-layered plots and the twists in St. James Park create a complicated but intriguing tale. Because the novel employs multiple plots, none of which are resolved until the end, the storylines are paced, ending at critical points, increasing interest and readability.