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Unearthing the ‘peace riots': ‘An Unlikely Prospect' turns historical silence into a story of resistance
California, says author Shelley Blanton-Stroud, 'is everything for me.'
The historical thriller writer is best known for a series of noir novels about Jane Benjamin, 'a tomato-picking, cross-dressing gossip columnist' working in the 1930s. Though Jane's 'a dust-bowl Okie immigrant to California,' Blanton-Stroud describes her as 'extremely ambitious, willing to do almost anything to achieve what she wants.'
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But Blanton-Stroud's latest book, 'An Unlikely Prospect,' focuses on a new protagonist — though Jane does reappear — whose narrative arc represents a different kind of female empowerment. Sandy Zimmer is a young widow living in San Francisco who, after her husband's death, transitions from being his secretary to the publisher of the newspaper.
'She's been successful at using her estimable feminine wiles to achieve what she needs,' explains Blanton-Stroud, 'and she now feels somewhat trapped by those roles. I wanted to learn what it might be like for a woman like that to push her way out of the rules that have governed her interactions to date and to see how far she might go.'
The Chronicle spoke to the Bakersfield native about the dark and relatively unknown chapter of San Francisco history that became a bit of an obsession — and inspired the new book.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: 'An Unlikely Prospect' is centered on the 1945 'peace riot' in San Francisco, an incident that involved multiple deaths and numerous rapes — yet no punishment for the perpetrators. Can you tell us about it?
A: On Aug. 14, 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered, ending World War II. Though celebrations broke out everywhere, San Francisco's Market Street celebration shifted into a wilding, what the newspapers called 'peace riots.' A mob of drunken sailors launched into a three-night spree, leaving 13 people dead, more than 1,000 injured and at least six women raped.
Witnesses described the police and Navy Shore Patrol as failing to take control, including claims that five sailors sexually assaulted a woman while police neglected to respond. When the dust settled, no officials were held accountable, police never filed even one rape report, despite hospital evidence, and a two-week grand jury investigation concluded with commendations praising Police Chief (Charles) Dullea and other officials and dismissing the riots as the work of 'servicemen who didn't want to be in the service.' The city's establishment chose a kind of willful blindness rather than justice, whitewashing a disgraceful chapter in the city's history.
Q: How did you uncover primary sources or oral histories on this incident? Were there firsthand accounts of the sort you include in the book?
A: Because no rape victims were named, I couldn't mine their real stories. So I fixated on finding the grand jury report, completed Aug. 30, 1945. It should have been possible to find that record in the Digital Reel, the archive resource at the Public Viewing room of the San Francisco Courthouse, but not in this case for this particular year.
Even when I've spoken to a handful of people who were on Market Street on (Victory over Japan) Day, they had no idea any of this had happened. The absence of this document made me wonder whether this was not just bureaucratic oversight but deliberate institutional silence.
The gap in the historical record began to seem like a gift that actually gave me room to fictionalize more completely, so long as I made it clear that this was historical fiction. That's what I did. The absence of evidence gave me my direction — to imagine what if?
Q: You mention in your afterword that the character of Sandy was inspired by figures like Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post who took over after her father and husband both died, and Cissy Patterson, one of the first women to lead a daily newspaper. I was not familiar with her!
A: I wish I'd had room for more Cissy. She was a flamboyant and controversial publisher, one of the first women to head a major daily newspaper, the Washington Times Herald. Born into newspaper royalty as granddaughter of Chicago Tribune owner Joseph Medill and sister to New York Daily News founder Joseph Medill Patterson, she was both celebrated as a pioneering female press baron and reviled for her feuds, political stances, and tumultuous personal life that included affairs, bitter rivalries and estrangement from her own daughter.
She claimed her family's journalism motto was, 'When your grandmother gets raped, put it on the front page.' It seems likely this was her motto and not that of the Medill family. I think her role in the novel is to be a foil to Sandy, who is far less cantankerous. I wanted her to urge Sandy to be a little braver, and less thin-skinned, in order to survive in the publishing world.
Q: Sandy and Jane, her colleague at the newspaper, have what feel like very contemporary views around rape and women's rights. How did you figure out the best way to balance contemporary attitudes with historical ones?
A: I love this question. Recently I participated in a panel on the difficulty for historical fiction authors of striking a balance between historical authenticity and accuracy and modern readability. It's mainly the difficulty of creating characters who feel relatable without being anachronistic. I definitely fall into the camp of writers who want their characters to be both authentic to their time and place and also to possess universal qualities that readers today will recognize.
A: I won't pretend to have suffered many obstacles in my life. But also, I was one of 25 women to enroll in the first freshman cohort of what was then called Claremont Men's College. (It was renamed Claremont McKenna College in my sophomore year.) It was an honor to be part of that group. But not every day was delightful. Most of us ran into some pretty naked misogyny (often) delivering the message that we didn't really belong. I think that experience developed a little defensiveness in me.
I see that defensiveness in Jane and Sandy. And I understand from my own life that their desire to 'prove' themselves sometimes gets in the way of doing it.
Q: What parallels do you see between Sandy's post-World War II fight for journalistic integrity and today's media environment?
A: What's happening to the world of journalism is heartbreaking, the buckling, the promising not to report on what might offend readership or government. Clearly there's no linear progression toward the ideal circumstances we might expect.
