Orchards filled with blooming fruit trees is not what most people associate with San Jose. However, the city was an agricultural paradise for much of the 19th and into the early 20th centuries. This is the setting of “St. James Park”, a novel set in the 1930s and written by 3rd-generation San Josean John Doll. In an interview with Ink, Doll said this book highlights a side of San Jose that Bay Area residents may be unaware of.
“If you’ve grown up in Santa Clara County or Palo Alto and you drive by [San Jose] on [Highway] 280 or 101, it is hard to imagine what it was like,” Doll said. “A hundred years ago, the entire county was filled with orchards with a ring of vineyards around the hillsides.”
Doll first learned about the history of San Jose through his mother, who shared stories from growing up in the area.
“She said every spring, the white blossoms from apricot trees and from the fruit orchards were very beautiful,” Doll said. “You could smell the blossoms from downtown San Jose.”
It was these stories that inspired Doll to write “St. James Park”.
“When I was thinking about retiring, I went back to my passion, which was to write,” Doll said. “I came back to a story that my mother and my grandmother first told me.”
“St. James Park” is based on real events that took place in 1933, including the lynching of an immigrant grocer. According to Doll, the darker parts of the story are just as important as drawing attention to the beauty of the time.
“Santa Clara County was bucolic, but there were some awful things that did happen,” Doll said. “[The] mob violence in “St. James Park” was very similar to [the events of] January 6.”
The novel explores themes of bigotry, hatred and civil corruption. Doll said these topics remain relevant almost 100 years after the events the book details.
“People should know about their history, and know that some of the things that are happening in today’s political world have happened before,” Doll said. The same agents of the status quo are still here.”
St. James Park is the first book in Doll’s trilogy set in San Jose, spanning from the 1920s to the present day. Doll has finished writing the second book, “Escape If You Can”, and hopes to have it published this year, despite the hurdles that he faced with the first book.
“You have to be halfway insane to try to get published these days,” Doll said. “If you are determined and stubborn, like I am, you just keep on going. … The most difficult challenge in life is to work the system to your favor.”
