When I got
hired a year and a half ago to write a family history that eventually came to
be called, The Borina Family of
Watsonville, there weren’t many expectations about how well it would sell.
The last of the Borinas (at least
in the line I was writing about) died in 2000, and the attorney who was mostly
administering the family foundation they left behind thought it would be
fitting to get the story captured, to the extent possible after all this time.
In fact, I recall his saying at the beginning that we’d probably need only a
few copies for libraries and archives.
I thought it might have a bit more
appeal than that. After all, it was a great rags-to-riches story, in which a
Croatian immigrant rides into town at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, makes
a huge fortune as an apple grower and shipper, and raises two daughters who
were independent professional women long before that became the norm. One of
them was the first female district attorney in the history of California.
A Good Story Long Forgotten
The more I worked on it, the more I
felt it was a good story, but since most people locally, where it took place,
knew next to nothing about it, how well could it sell? Sad to say there isn’t
always a direct correlation between the quality of the story and its sales.
So when it was finally ready to go
to the printer, the Foundation ordered a hundred copies. They arrived just
before Thanksgiving, and I got them out into the three main local bookstores.
We got out a press release, talked to the two major local papers, and held our
collective breath.
At this point I should probably
explain that in Santa Cruz County, and specifically in Watsonville, there is a
significant Croatian-American population, most descended from people who came
to America in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. The collective
story of their migration and pre-eminence in California’s apple-growing
industry was wonderfully told by Donna Mekis and Kathryn Mekis Miller in their
book, Blossoms Into Gold.
Christmas Present? Who’d Have Thought?
The first news story came out
Saturday and the second yesterday. Already, it seems, the Croatian telegraph
had been humming and word was getting out about the book. The bookstore in
Watsonville sold out in three days and the store in Santa Cruz ordered extra
copies.
One of the county’s judges heard
about the book and rushed out to buy a copy to see what it said about the
female DA. And although the Borinas are gone, the maternal line, the Secondo
family, is still quite large and they bought copies. The owner of the
Watsonville bookstore told me that some people were buying multiple copies to
give as Christmas presents.
In the few days the book has been
out, I’ve already received some emails from people telling me how much they
enjoyed it. One was from the granddaughter of the sister of the woman who
became Mrs. Borina, who said she knew many of the people in the book and was
glad to see their story in print.
A second printing has been ordered,
and I’m looking forward to this Saturday, when I’ll be doing a book-signing at
Crossroads Books in Watsonville. I’ll undoubtedly be told I got some things
wrong and left some things out, but that’s all right. The book clearly touched
a nerve with people who felt that, even though it wasn’t specifically about
them, it told their story. You can’t beat a personal connection like that.
