Worthy Brown's Daughter (28 page)

Authors: Phillip Margolin

BOOK: Worthy Brown's Daughter

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W
orthy Brown stood at the rail of the steamer to San Francisco, the first leg of the journey east. White sails appeared on the horizon from time to time, and a pod of whales had entertained the passengers the day before. Otherwise, there was little to break the monotony of the calm and endless sea.

Worthy heard footsteps, and a moment later Roxanne was leaning on the rail beside him.

“The ocean sure is big,” she said as she looked toward the horizon.

Roxanne’s sense of wonder made Worthy smile. “It sure is.”

“You told me that it took forever when you came from Africa across the ocean. I didn’t know what you meant by ‘forever’ until now. I don’t know how you survived the journey.”

“It was hard, but seeing you here with me now I believe that every hard thing that happened in my life was worth the sacrifice. I would do it all over again if I knew you would end up free and happy.”

Roxanne smiled. “I am free, Papa, and I am most definitely happy.”

Worthy laughed and pulled Roxanne against him.

“You make me proud; you make me proud.”

They talked a little longer. Then Worthy went inside, but Roxanne stayed at the rail. The last few days had been a whirlwind, and it was good to have time to reflect on them.

Would everything turn out well for her? She looked out at the vast expanse of ocean and thought about her endless possibilities.

“I believe things will go well for me, Daddy,” she whispered into the strong breeze. “I believe they will.”

Author’s Note

In the early 1980s I read an article about
Holmes v. Ford
, a case from the Oregon Territory. In Missouri, Colonel Nathaniel Ford had owned Robin and Polly Holmes and their children as slaves, but when he moved to the Oregon Territory, Ford told Robin and Polly that if they helped him establish a farm in the Willamette Valley, he would free the family. The Holmeses kept their part of the bargain, but Ford kept only part of his. He freed the parents and one small child but retained several of the children as indentured servants. During this time period, Oregon was hostile to blacks. When Oregon became a state in 1859, the state constitution barred free Negroes from living in Oregon unless they had been residing there when the constitution was passed. The Holmeses, who were illiterate, had to find a white lawyer who would help them get their children back. In 1853, George Williams, the chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, ordered Ford to return the children, but one had already died in Ford’s custody.

I thought this situation was heart wrenching. I could not imagine what Robin and Polly had gone through, and decided to write a novel inspired by the case. I set the book in 1860, during Oregon’s second year as a state, and made one of my main characters a young lawyer who was grieving for his wife, whom he had lost on the Oregon Trail.

During the 1980s I spent many hours in the library of the Oregon Historical Society learning about frontier life in 1860 and, more specifically, what the practice of law was like then. I also stumbled across a memoir of Stephen J. Field, one of America’s most colorful citizens. The first United States Supreme Court justice from the West, Field was also the only Supreme Court justice to be arrested for murder while sitting on the bench. I decided that a character based loosely on Field, as well as a highly fictionalized version of the case that led to his arrest, would be part of my book.

For several years on and off I worked on a draft of
Worthy Brown’s Daughter
. Then, in 1993,
Gone, But Not Forgotten
became my first best seller. In 1996, I retired from law to write full-time. I wrote contemporary legal thrillers while my historical novel languished in a drawer. Sometime in the 1990s I dusted it off and reread it. After a consultation with Jean Naggar, my exceptional agent, we decided that the book still needed more work before it would be worthy of publication.

In 2010, Jennifer Weltz, another of my agents, took a look at the book and made some brilliant suggestions that prompted me to rewrite it from page one. HarperCollins agreed to publish
Worthy Brown’s Daughter
, and my editors, Caroline Upcher and Claire Wachtel, worked hard to make the novel the best book I’ve written, and Milan Bozic designed the perfect jacket to showcase it.

I have taken liberties with some of the historical events in the book. The
Oregon Pony arrived in Oregon in 1862, not 1860, and Charles and Ellen Kean performed
The Merchant of Venice
in 1864. I want to thank Chet Orloff, former executive director of the Oregon Historical Society, for reading the book and bringing other historical inaccuracies to my attention.

Special thanks also go to Ron Cinniger, who plotted Matthew Penny’s cross-country trip, which did not make it into the final manuscript, and provided me with invaluable reference materials. Thanks also to Dick Pintarich for his invaluable information about the Barlow Road, and Nancy Kelton, Pam Webb, Jay Margulies, Jerry Margolin, and Virginia Sewell for their constructive comments. Thanks to my wonderful children, Ami and Daniel, and Ami’s husband, Andy, for their support. And, as always, thanks to Doreen, my muse, who continues to inspire me.

Set out here is a bibliography of books I read while working on
Worthy Brown’s Daughter
. Since my research was ongoing from the early 1980s, it is possible that I have forgotten to include other books and articles I relied on. If so, I apologize in advance.

Anderson, Dorothea.
Your District Attorney’s Office
, 1855–1977, Portland: Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, n.d.

Barlow, Mary S., “History of the Barlow Road,”
Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 3
(1902), 71–81.

Cooling, Benjamin Franklin.
Symbol, Sword and Shield: Defending Washington During the Civil War
. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975.

Davis, William C.
Battle at Bull Run: A History of the First Major Campaign of the Civil War
. Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1977.

Field, Stephen J.
Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California
. New York: Da Capo Press, 1968.

Gilbert, Bil. “Thar Was Old Grit in Him.”
Sports Illustrated
, January 17, 1983.

Harrell, Mary Ann.
Equal Justice Under Law: The Supreme Court in American Life
. Arlington, VA: The Foundation of the Federal Bar Association, 1975.

Lansing, Ronald B.
Nimrod-Courts, Claims, and Killing on the Oregon Frontier
. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2005.

Leeson, Fred.
Rose City Justice: A Legal History of Portland, Oregon
. Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, in cooperation with the Oregon State Bar, 1998.

Lewis, Oscar.
This Was San Francisco
. Philadelphia: David McKay Co., Inc., 1962.

Lockley, Fred. “Facts Pertaining to Ex-Slaves in Oregon and Documentary Record of the Case of Robin Holmes vs. Nathaniel Ford.”
Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 23
(June 1922).

Lockwood, Charles.
Suddenly San Francisco: The Early Years
. San Francisco: A California Living Book, 1978.

McLagan, Elizabeth.
A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788–1940
, Athens, GA: The Georgian Press, 1980.

Meredith, Roy.
Mr. Lincoln’s Camera Man: Matthew B. Brady
. Second revised edition. New York: Dover Publications, 1974.

Morrison, Samuel Eliot.
The Oxford History of the American People. Vol. 2
. New York: New American Library, 1972.

Muscatine, Doris.
Old San Francisco: The Biography of a City
. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975.

Pintarich, Dick. “Sam Barlow’s Infamous Road.”
Oregon Magazine
(February 1983).

Richards, Leverett. “Mrs. McNatt on the Oregon Trail.”
The Oregonian
(July 1, 1979).

Sandburg, Carl.
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. Volume 1
. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939.

Vestal, Stanley.
Joe Meek: The Merry Mountain Man
. Lincoln: Bison Books, the University of Nebraska Press, 1952.

Victor, Frances Fuller.
The River of the West
. Oakland, CA: Brooks-Sterling, 1974. First published in 1870 by R. W. Bliss and Co.

About the Author

P
HILLIP
M
ARGOLIN
has written seventeen
New York Times
bestsellers, including his latest,
Sleight of Hand
, and the Washington Trilogy. Each displays a unique, compelling insider’s view of criminal behavior, which comes from his long background as a criminal defense attorney who has handled thirty murder cases. Winner of the Distinguished Northwest Writer Award, he lives in Portland, Oregon.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Also by Phillip Margolin

Lost Lake

Sleeping Beauty

The Associate

The Undertaker’s Widow

The Burning Man

After Dark

Gone, but Not Forgotten

The Last Innocent Man

Dana Cutler Novels

•

Amanda Jaffe Novels

•

Vanishing Acts
(with Ami Margolin Rome)

Credits

Cover design by Milan Bozic

Cover photographs: Library of Congress (portrait); © Zee / Alamy (locket); © CrazyLazy / Alamy (fence background)

WORTHY BROWN’S DAUGHTER
. Copyright © 2014 by Phillip Margolin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-219534-0

EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780062195364

14 15 16 17 18 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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