Sonoma Rose: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel (48 page)

Rosa hardly recognized herself as the same haunted, despondent mother who had brought them there.

In October 1929, the stock market crashed and the nation reeled.

The following February, the House Judiciary Committee surprised the nation by announcing that it would open debate on measures that could possibly lead to the modification or even repeal of Prohibition.

The news did little to lift the spirits of weary grape growers
and winemakers in Sonoma County, who knew that congressional hearings and debates could drone on endlessly but lead nowhere, and that bills could stall in committee. In the meantime, fear and force bound Prohibition enforcement agents, gangsters, vintners, and ordinary citizens together in a barbed-wire net of violence.

Federal inquiries discovered that the Prohibition bureau was rife with corruption—something Rosa could have told them years before, sparing them the trouble and expense of a lengthy investigation. In the aftermath of the report’s release, hundreds of enforcement officers around the country were fired for falsification of official records, extortion, bribery, theft, forgery, perjury, conspiracy, and a host of other crimes, but the bureaucratic housecleaning seemed to make no difference. Crime syndicates remained as firmly entrenched as ever, and the newly hired replacement Prohibition agents enforced the laws no better than those who had been dismissed.

The harvest of 1930 was expected to be one of the most bountiful in years, but the combined blows of an enormous surplus of grapes and devastatingly low prices brought on by the Great Depression threatened the California grape industry with total collapse. More grape growers uprooted their vines and planted other crops. More wineries closed.

Rosa and Lars hung on. With every change of season they told themselves that Prohibition was inching toward its inevitable demise. If they endured and economized, they could keep Sonoma Rose Vineyards and Orchard afloat until Rosa and Daniel could sell their young wines and make more than two hundred gallons apiece. In the meantime, Rosa would learn and perfect her craft. So many gifted winemakers had been forced from the profession. Much knowledge and skill had been lost,
but Daniel was an excellent teacher, and he knew many retirees who were more than willing to nostalgically reminisce about the golden age of California winemaking with Rosa, who served them lunch, strolled with them through her grapevines, and remembered the details and nuances of every story they told.

Rosa and Lars knew they were much better off than most other families those days. They had the farm, so even in that time of widespread poverty and hunger, their children had plenty to eat. They would tighten their belts and count their blessings and hang on.

In 1931, Sonoma County suffered through blistering heat waves, drought, and terrible insect infestations. But even though grape growers sent the smallest crop of grapes to market in ten years, the ongoing economic crisis meant abysmal sales and negligible profits. The usual rules of supply and demand didn’t apply when no one had money to spend.

The poor and the desperate from across the country flooded California seeking work—not looking for a handout, but a job, a place to sleep, and the means to feed their families. Rosa and Lars hired as many men as they could, sheltered as many as the dormitory and the barn hayloft would hold. It was never enough. Sometimes Rosa went off alone and wept when she had to turn away men in threadbare clothes and shoes held together with twine because Lars had no more work for them and they could not afford to take on anyone else. But Rosa never turned away women with children. Somehow they all managed to make do with a little less to help one more mother and child.

In 1932, Herbert Hoover asked the American people to elect him to a second term. “Why not?” asked Lars sardonically. “He did so well with the first one.”

Rosa had never been happier that women had won the right to vote as she was on Election Day that November. She was among the first in line at her polling place, and after she pulled the lever for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, she murmured a prayer that the New Deal he proposed would bring a new era of pulling together for the common good to a nation in dire need of change. Throughout his campaign, Roosevelt had promised to correct the great national mistake that was Prohibition, and Rosa fervently hoped he would prevail. Change was in the air, and soon, she hoped, a refreshing wind would blow justice and common sense their way.

Roosevelt was elected in a landslide. On the same day, nine states, including California, held referenda on Prohibition, and the voters overwhelmingly called for repeal. Prohibition had been dealt a fatal blow, but it was not dead yet. It remained the law of the land.

Sonoma Rose Vineyards and Orchard flourished. In any other era the family would have prospered, but the Depression meant that they barely managed to get by. Even as Rosa struggled to make ends meet, she never forgot to thank God for her children’s health and to count her blessings, nor did she forget the loyal friend who had spurred her to flee the adobe after John beat her and went off to murder Lars. If Elizabeth Nelson had not been with her that day, Rosa would have picked herself up off the floor, calmed the children, washed her face, and paced through the house while she waited for John to return with blood on his hands and news of Lars’s death on his lips. If she had not fled that night, she would still be living in the adobe, a widow struggling to raise her two remaining children. Rosa knew this as irrefutable fact because everything that had happened
to her from that day forward turned on the pivot of her decision to heed Elizabeth’s warnings.

If Rosa and the children had not taken flight that day and sought refuge in the canyon, Lars would not have found them there, rescued them from the flood, and driven them to the safe obscurity of Oxnard. While it was true that Lars had come to the adobe looking for her after he returned to the Jorgensen ranch and discovered what John had done, by then the police searching the Barclay farm had found the contraband in the hayloft. They would not have let Rosa leave with Lars. She wouldn’t have gone to Oxnard or taken Ana and Miguel to see Dr. Russell at the hospital, so he would have been unable to refer her to Dr. Reynolds. Without Dr. Reynolds, she never would have learned the cause of her children’s mysterious illness. Ana and Miguel would be dead; Mathias and Oscar never would have been born.

Every good thing in Rosa’s life since leaving the Arboles Valley depended upon Elizabeth Nelson, the catalyst of her escape.

Despite the crushing restrictions of Prohibition and the hardships of the Great Depression, Rosa and Lars were getting by in Sonoma County. They did not need a rye farm in Southern California that they could never visit. And Rosa owed Elizabeth a debt of gratitude she could never fully repay.

Even so, Rosa and Lars resolved to try.

They hired a San Francisco lawyer and arranged for him to travel to the Arboles Valley to offer the Barclay farm to Elizabeth and Henry for five dollars an acre. Mindful that the Nelsons might not be able to afford even that nominal amount, they authorized the lawyer to offer them other terms: In exchange for farming the land, maintaining the property, and paying the property taxes, the Ottesens would pay the Nelsons a modest
salary and let them keep any profits they earned from whatever crops they decided to raise. The Nelsons would pay the Ottesens quarterly payments of fifty dollars, which would be put toward the five-hundred-dollar purchase price. In five years, the title would be transferred to the Nelsons and the farm would be theirs, free and clear. The lawyer informed the astonished couple that the Ottesens hoped the Nelsons would rename the farm Triumph Ranch. “Mrs. Nelson, especially, loved the name you suggested,” Mr. Tomilson reported to Rosa and Lars after he returned from the Arboles Valley with all the necessary papers signed and notarized. He shook his head and smiled sheepishly. He had thought the name an odd request and had expected the Nelsons to decline, even though Rosa had assured him they wouldn’t.

Eight years before, Henry and Elizabeth had come to the Arboles Valley full of hope and ambition, believing they held the deed to a thriving ranch, confident that they would prosper on fertile acres beneath sunny California skies. The swindler who had cheated them out of their life savings had shattered their dreams, but they had endured the blow with grace and had resolved to rebuild their lives, undaunted. In the midst of her disappointment, Elizabeth had looked beyond her own heartache and had reached out to a grieving woman and a lonely man. Rosa and Lars owed her everything. And now the Nelsons’ dream of Triumph Ranch could finally come true.

In anticipation of President-elect Roosevelt’s inauguration on March 4, 1933, Congress passed a resolution to end Prohibition if a majority vote of state conventions from thirty-six of the forty-eight states ratified a Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution nullifying the Eighteenth.

In the months that followed, one state after another voted for repeal—including, on July 24, 1933, California. Although the magic number of thirty-six had not yet been reached, the outcome already seemed inevitable, so the federal government closed down the Prohibition bureau. Six days after California voted for repeal, all Prohibition agents in Sonoma County were to be relieved of duty. They did not go quietly. A few hours before midnight, by which time they were expected to have closed out their files and turned in their weapons, agents raided a popular Sonoma watering hole, confiscated a small amount of alcohol, and, since the proprietor wasn’t in at the time, arrested the chef. The unfortunate man was hauled off to the county jail in Santa Rosa, where he was photographed, fingerprinted, and arraigned on charges of liquor possession. Whether he paid his $750 bail before or after the agents who arrested him became obsolete was the subject of some debate among the disgusted citizens who read about the arrest in the paper the next morning. To Rosa the eleventh-hour raid seemed spiteful, pointless, and all too reminiscent of something Dwight Crowell would have organized and taken part in with malicious glee.

All that summer, states held conventions to vote on the Twenty-first Amendment, Sonoma County grape growers predicted a modest harvest, and vintners prepared to make wine. Everyone kept busy, watching and waiting.

It wasn’t until November 9 that Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah voted to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, bringing the total to thirty-six states. The Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution had passed.

Prohibition was finished.

• • •

For months, like grape growers and winemakers throughout California wine country, the vintners at Sonoma Rose Vineyards and Orchard had been working almost without rest in anticipation of the day in early December when the repeal of Prohibition would officially go into effect.

On December 5, 1933, winemakers and brewers, bottlers and coopers, grape growers and hops ranchers across the nation welcomed the end of Prohibition with joyful celebrations—or, for many others, with sober contemplation of their sacrifices and the long road they had yet to travel before they could rebuild all they had lost. Rosa, Lars, their children, and their friends quietly rejoiced, thankful and relieved and mindful of the work that lay ahead. But their mood was jubilant. After many long, hard years, promise was in the air and prosperity seemed within their grasp.

Daniel had taught Rosa everything he knew about winemaking, and although she still had much to learn, she was confident that someday she would create a truly magnificent wine. Dante Cacchione and Paulo Del Bene promised her that she would never forget the day she tasted the first vintage that would bear her name. “But which name?” Lars asked her ruefully when no one else could hear.

There could be no question of that. She had no doubts. She knew who she was. Rosa Diaz Barclay had perished in the flash flood that had swept through the Salto Canyon more than eight years before. That despondent, broken woman was no more. In the years to come, tourists who made their way up the steep, winding road through the lush forests of Glen Ellen to sample her vintages would know her as Sonoma Rose, and she would be content if they never knew her by any other name. She was Rose Ottesen—grape grower, winemaker, wife, and mother—and her heart, at long last, was at peace.

•  •  •

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I am deeply grateful to Denise Roy, Maria Massie, Ava Kavyani, Liza Cassity, Christine Ball, Brian Tart, Nadia Kashper, Melanie Marder Parks, and everyone at Dutton and Plume for their contributions to
Sonoma Rose
and the Elm Creek Quilts series.

Numerous people graciously assisted me during the research and writing of this novel. Geraldine Neidenbach, Heather Neidenbach, Marty Chiaverini, and Brian Grover were kind enough to read yet another manuscript on a tight deadline and provide the timely, insightful comments I have come to rely upon. I sincerely thank Gaye LeBaron, Sonoma County historian and author, for examining the manuscript with a careful eye and helping me rid it of inaccuracies and anachronisms. Friend and problem-solver extraordinaire Fran Threewit earned my gratitude by making my research trip to Sonoma County smoother, easier, and much more fun than if I
had gone it alone. Others who offered their expertise include Greg Berruto and Jack Gilbert, Benziger Family Winery; David Coscia, Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society; Kevin Grant, Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery; Jennifer Hanson, Sonoma State Historic Park; Cara Randall, California State Railroad Museum; Gery Rosemurgy, Broadway Quilts in Sonoma; and Ruth Straessler, Santa Rosa Railroad Square. My sincere thanks to you all.

I am indebted to the Wisconsin Historical Society and their librarians and staff for maintaining the excellent archives from which I drew research resources for this book. The following works were especially instructive: Louis J. Foppiano, et al.,
A Century of Winegrowing in Sonoma County, 1896–1996
(Berkeley: The Bancroft Library, University of California, 1996); Stefano Guandalini, M.D., “A Brief History of Celiac Disease.”
Impact: A Publication of the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center
Vol 7 No 3 (Summer 2007): 1–2; Sidney V. Haas, M.D., “The Value of the Banana in the Treatment of Celiac Disease.”
American Journal of Diseases of Children
Vol 28 No 4 (October 1924): 421–37; Gaye LeBaron and Joann Mitchell,
Santa Rosa: A Twentieth Century Town
(Santa Rosa, CA: Historia, 1993); Robert M. Lynch,
The Sonoma Valley Story: Pages through the Ages
(Sonoma, CA: The Sonoma Index–Tribune, Inc., 1997); Vivienne Sosnowski,
When the Rivers Ran Red: An Amazing Story of Courage and Triumph in America’s Wine Country
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Lee Torliatt,
Golden Memories of the Redwood Empire.
(Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001); Honoria Tuomey,
History of Sonoma County, California, Vol I.
(Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Co, 1926); Ventura County Star,
Ventura County Looking Back: A Photographic History of Ventura County: The Early Years.
(Battle Ground, WA: Pediment Publishing, 2006); and Simone Wilson,
Sonoma County: The River of Time
(Chatsworth, CA: Windsor Publications, 1990).