The Soil Remembers: The Saga of the Sieli Family

An Italian American Family in California’s San Joaquin Valley

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Author’s Note

This work is a blend of history and storytelling. The Sieli family is fictional, but their struggles, triumphs, and contradictions are drawn from the lived experiences of thousands of Italian immigrants and their descendants who settled in California.

The episodes you will read are based on real patterns of prejudice, assimilation, and solidarity that shaped immigrant life: anti-Italian riots during the Gold Rush, lynchings and nativist politics in the late 19th century, Prohibition-era grape bricks, Depression labor conflicts, farmworker strikes led by César Chávez, and the long process by which Italians became “White” in America.

I have taken creative license in weaving these into a continuous family saga. The goal is not strict genealogy, but to illuminate the broader truths of California’s immigrant history. The Sieli vineyard stands as a symbol — of hardship, faith, labor, prejudice, resilience, and ultimately reconciliation.

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Prologue: The Vineyard as Witness

In California, the soil remembers.

It remembers the feet of miners trampling the Sierra rivers in search of gold. It remembers the sweat of Italian immigrants who planted vines where others saw only dust. It remembers Mexican families bent over rows, Okie children sleeping between the vines, priests blessing secret barrels of wine during Prohibition, and union marchers chanting for dignity in the fields.

The Sieli family’s vineyard has stood through it all. From the 1850s to the present day, its roots have been watered by the struggles of migrants. To walk its rows is to walk through California’s past — a past scarred by prejudice but also made rich by survival.

This is the story of those vines, and of the family who tended them.

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Book I: 

1850-1950

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The Vineyard’s Choice

Present Day – 2025

By the autumn of 2025, the San Joaquin Valley was a patchwork of memory and erasure. Rooftops and cul-de-sacs pressed against the edges of the vines, swallowing orchards that once seemed eternal. The Sieli vineyard, stubborn as ever, still clung to its rows.

Michael and Dominic, brothers now in their seventies, stood beneath the old sycamores. Their niece Sofia leaned on the fence beside them, her eyes tracing the horizon.

Michael broke the silence. “We’ve outlasted droughts, debts, Prohibition. But the pressure now—developers, city councils, buyers with fat checks—it feels like the land itself is closing in.”

Dominic’s jaw set hard. “We survived because we kept order. Borders, laws, rules. That’s how you protect a name.”

Sofia shook her head. “Rules, yes. But do you forget what our own roots looked like? Giuseppe and Antonio came here from Liguria in the 1850s. They were spat on, called dagos, run out of mining camps. They worked alongside Mexicans, Chinese, and Irish because no one else would stand with them. How do we go from that—to you railing against immigrants and acting like diversity makes us weak?”

The brothers exchanged a heavy look. Years had worn their anger into something quieter.

Michael exhaled slowly. “I’ll always believe in law, in borders, in doing things the right way. But maybe you’re right, Sof. Maybe celebrating other cultures doesn’t make us less American. Maybe it makes us more.”

Dominic’s voice softened. “We wouldn’t still be here without them. Mexican, Filipino, Okie, Chinese—their hands kept this vineyard alive. That’s the truth, whether I like it or not.”

For a moment, they stood together in silence, listening to the wind rustle the vines. Past and present folded into one.

Their words turned to memory: of Giuseppe and Antonio leaving Liguria in the 1850s, chased by hunger and hope; of mobs and signs that read No Dagos Allowed; of friendships with those just as despised, men from Ireland, cooks from China, laborers from Mexico; of Prohibition, when grape bricks and sacramental barrels saved the vineyard; of the Depression, when Okie families slept between the rows; of World War II, when Pietro marched off to fight and Italians were branded “enemy aliens”; of the postwar years, when Fresno sprouted subdivisions and Italians who once carried slurs suddenly carried respectability.

Sofia’s voice carried into the dusk. “We’ve been both despised strangers and accepted Americans. If we forget that, we forget ourselves.”

Michael looked down at the dirt beneath his boots, the soil pressed by generations of footsteps. “Our ancestors planted more than vines here.”

Dominic gave a weary nod.

And Sofia spoke the truth that had carried through every storm, every harvest, every silence:

“…the soil remembers.”

Liberty in Two Tongues

Freedom, like the vine, must be planted deep and tended with patience. It demands seasons of faith, storms of sacrifice, and the kind of hope that survives exile.

Before the first Sieli vine ever took root in California soil, another rebellion had already reshaped the world. In 1776, a handful of colonists on the far edge of empire declared that men were not born to serve kings. They were farmers and printers, blacksmiths and dreamers, standing against one of the greatest armies on earth.

The words they spoke were dangerous enough to hang for:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
That daring would echo across oceans.
The tricolor—green, white, and red—became a promise as much as a flag.
It would take another sixty years, a generation’s worth of struggle and exile, before the flag of a united Italy rose at last in 1861.
Freedom, it turned out, had to be won twice—once in battle, and again in memory.

When the smoke cleared, a new flag fluttered above thirteen fragile states. America was imperfect and young—its ideals still wrinkled with contradiction—but it had dared to name liberty aloud.

In Italy, the Sielis’ ancestors still lived divided under foreign crowns. The dream of a united homeland seemed as distant as the moon. But whispers of freedom crossed borders like contraband: Mazzini’s manifestos, Garibaldi’s proclamations, songs of revolt sung in taverns and fields.

By the late 1790s, French armies had carried revolution across the Alps, and for a brief, blinding moment Italians saw what independence might look like. The dream faltered, as dreams often do, but the idea—Italia una, Italia libera—took root in the hearts of peasants, poets, and patriots.

 The Gold Dust Vine

The stone cottage clung to the hillside above Chiavari, its walls damp with the sea’s breath. From the door, Antonio could see the terraces step down toward the coast, olive trees bent like old men under the salt wind. Beyond, the Ligurian Sea glittered blue, but to him it looked less like promise and more like a prison wall.

Giuseppe sat at the rough-hewn table, rolling a rosary between his fingers. His face was lined deeper than his thirty years should have allowed. “The priest says cholera has taken ten more in the village. And the tax collector came again. He wants another share for Turin.”

Antonio spat into the hearth. “Turin. They take and take, but do they know us? Do they care for Ligurians? We are peasants to them, not men.”

Giuseppe’s gaze drifted to the window, where their vines clung stubbornly to thin strips of earth. “The soil gives less each year. There is no room for our sons. Even if the grapes thrive, the soldiers will come for them, or the cholera will come for us.”

Antonio leaned forward, his voice low but fierce. “The papers in Genoa speak of California. A place where gold lies in rivers, where land waits for men with strong backs. They say the climate is like ours. Olives, vines, figs—they grow there. If we stay, we bury ourselves in debt. If we go…” He paused, swallowing the lump in his throat. “If we go, maybe our children will not starve.”

Giuseppe closed his eyes. He remembered the revolts of 1848, the smoke rising over Genoa, the soldiers firing into crowds of workers who had shouted for bread and dignity. He remembered neighbors beaten, jailed, or conscripted. He remembered being called “undesirable,” even in his own land.

“And what of our faith?” he whispered. “The papers say America has no place for Catholics. They say we are not true Americans, only servants of Rome.”

Antonio gave a hard smile. “And here, what are we? Dagos. Garlic eaters. Too poor to matter. Better to be unwanted in a land of chances than unwanted in a land that is dying.”

The rosary clicked in Giuseppe’s hands. He thought of their father, buried in the hillside earth, of the terraces carved stone by stone, of the sea that had always fed them fish but never freedom. He lifted his eyes to Antonio’s, and in them burned the same hunger, the same desperation.

“When we go,” Giuseppe said at last, “we do not go for gold. We go for roots. If not for us, then for the children. So that one day, when they stand in the vines, they will not see a prison, but a promise.”

Antonio clasped his brother’s hand. “Then it is decided.”

That night, under a Ligurian sky thick with stars, the brothers packed what little they owned: rosaries, a trunk of clothes, a cutting of vine wrapped in damp cloth. When dawn broke, they walked down to the port of Genoa. The sea, which had always hemmed them in, now opened like a road. They boarded a ship bound west, leaving behind a land of narrow terraces for a world vast and unknown.

And though they could not yet know it, the soil would remember.

The Crossing

The first thing California took from them was the smell of salt.

For weeks on the Atlantic, the scent lived in their skin. It clung to their hair and clothes and rosaries; it salted their bread and the beads of sweat that rolled down their necks at night when the ship groaned through black water. Giuseppe Sieli would lay on the rough plank and count the creaks as if they were prayers, whispering Ave, ave, ave into the darkness until the syllables softened the fear. Antonio would wedge himself under the lower deck beams and pretend he was back beneath their father’s arbor in Liguria, the vines making a cathedral roof of leaves above him while bees hummed a psalm.

On the fourteenth night, a storm rose. The sea turned to iron and hammered the ship. Barrels ripped loose. Children cried. A man in a red cap shouted orders in English; another man slipped, vanished, and the ocean swallowed him without a ripple. Antonio was thrown against the rail so hard his breath flew out of him like a bird. A wave reached up and tried to take him. Giuseppe caught his brother’s arm and held until both their shoulders sparked with pain.

“Do not let go,” Antonio rasped in Genoese dialect.

“I would sooner let go of my life,” Giuseppe answered.

When dawn finally broke, the sea had spent its anger. The world smelled of wet wood and relief. On the twentieth day, someone cried out Terra! and the ship inched toward a jagged coastline that seemed to rise from the waves like the back of a sleeping monster. The captain called it California. The brothers crossed themselves, and for the first time since leaving home, Antonio laughed—short, unbelieving, but real.

“California,” he said, tasting the word. “We will be rich, Beppe.”

Giuseppe smiled without showing his teeth. “We will be alive,” he said. “That will be the greater miracle.”

 The City of Hope and Fists

San Francisco in 1852 smelled of horse dung, pipe smoke, frying fish, and the resin of new-cut timber. Streets rose and fell like waves themselves, shacks perched on the hills as if any moment they might take pity and slide back down to the water. Men shouted in a dozen languages. Women in calico aprons bargained in doorways. Chinese laborers carried poles and baskets. Irish bricklayers sang to keep time with their hammers. Over everything clanged the metal-throat music of construction.

The brothers slept their first nights in a boarding house that charged too much for a mattress stuffed with straw and one chipped basin of water. In the mornings, they followed maps drawn by rumor to supply yards and to a grocer named Bellosio who kept barrels of olives and salted anchovies outside his door.

“Genoa?” Bellosio asked when he heard their lilt. “I can hear the port in your vowels. You are far from home.” He slid them a small, oily parcel—anchovies he pretended to have miscounted. “Eat,” he said, “so you do not forget what real food tastes like when you are up in the mountains eating dust.”

They were buying canvas and a skillet when the riot ran by like a brushfire. It started with a slur, grew teeth, and by the time it reached the grocer’s lane it was a knot of men swollen on whiskey and grievance. A window shattered. A scale crashed. Bellosio turned the key on his door and pressed the brothers into the storeroom behind barrels of oil and vinegar.

“Always know which door you will use to run,” he said softly, and when the crowd moved on he unlocked the door with a sigh and swept glass into a pan with the weariness of a man who has done this before and will do it again.

That night, on a hill above the bay, the brothers looked at the flicker of a thousand lamps freckling the dark. Antonio hugged his knees.

“They look like the candles they set for All Souls back home,” he said.

“Or the gold dust they say lies in the streams,” Giuseppe answered. He did not add: It is easy to mistake candles for stars when you are starving for light.

 Placerville: A Sign on a Post

They went east with the spring—hired onto a mule train, paying in labor what they could not pay in coins. Over ridges, through oak savanna that opened like a golden jaw. Creeks ran cold and clean. The Sierra beyond was blue as a bruise.

Placerville was a forest of signs nailed onto poles, half of them offering salvation, the other half forbidding it. Supplies! Boots! Hot Meals! and (in hand-scratched letters) NO DAGOS ALLOWED.

Giuseppe read the placard twice, carefully, lips moving. He did not need the translation. The laughter spilling from the saloon did it for him.

“Not you,” said a broad-shouldered man on the doorstep. He had a beard the color of old rope and a voice like shovels. “You eat your garlic out back.”

“We can pay,” Antonio said in English good enough to surprise himself and irritate the man.

“You’ll pay somewhere else.”

Antonio took half a step forward; Giuseppe’s fingers found his elbow and held fast.

“Another day,” Giuseppe murmured. “Another door.”

They ate cold bread that night and drank river water. The stars above them seemed close enough to pluck and drop into their sacks, but when morning came they were still poor and the stars had taken their light with them.

 Camp on the Edge

They found space for their canvas by a creek on the far side of camp, where the ground was less picked-over and the air less crackling with watchfulness. To their left, an Irish tent staked with sticks and good humor, a fiddle inside. To their right, a Chinese cookfire breathing a perfume of rice and tea that made Giuseppe’s stomach ache with homesick hunger. Down-slope, a Chilean family: a woman with a baby, a man whose hands spoke in calluses.

The Anglos occupied the ridge, as if elevation conferred citizenship. The Sielis learned the borderlines fast. They learned the shadows that could keep a man safe; they learned who would sell a loaf of bread without spitting in it.

A man named Seamus O’Rourke came by the first afternoon, red hair shining even through the dust. He carried a pick and a grin.

“You two look like you’ve seen a sign or two,” he said, glancing toward the saloon with the “No Dagos” notice. He offered a tin cup of coffee as a treaty. “They have a sign for us as well,” he added. “Only it’s spelled different.”

“We are learning new alphabets,” Giuseppe said, and the Irishman’s grin widened.

“Names?” Seamus asked.

“Giuseppe,” said Giuseppe. “And Antonio. Sieli.”

“Seamus,” the man said. “O’Rourke.” He took a sip and peered into their faces. “You’ve got good hands. Not gambler’s hands. Cook’s hands,” he added to Giuseppe. “And you—” he nodded toward Antonio’s wrists and the way he held the pick he had borrowed for the day—“blacksmith’s hands.”

“I can sharpen,” Antonio said.

“Then there’s your gold,” Seamus replied. “Not in the river. In what the river wears out.”

It was a simple equation and a true one. By the end of the week, Giuseppe was selling stew from a kettledrum: beans, salt pork, onions, and a scandalous amount of garlic. Men wrinkled their noses and paid anyway. “Damn papist cooks better than my wife,” one said and came back the next night for seconds.

Antonio set up a grindstone. Picks came to him like pilgrims. He took their dulled teeth and gave them bite again. He said little and let sparks carry what his words could not.

On Sundays, the brothers walked to a canvas chapel, a makeshift cross tied from two rough sticks. A priest in a frayed collar said Mass. When they left, a man on horseback trailed them, whispering papists as if it were a mosquito he meant to crush. Antonio turned once, jaw tight. Giuseppe laid a hand on his shoulder without raising his eyes. He had learned that anger draws the same attention as pride, and both get a man in trouble.

That night, at the mouth of the tent, Li Ming—the Chinese cook—set down a clay bowl of rice and salted greens, bowed, and vanished. In the morning, Giuseppe left a hunk of bread and a wedge of cheese in the same place, the grammar of gratitude that requires no common words.

The Italian Names of the Sierra

The brothers soon learned they were not the first from the old country to chase fortune into California’s hills. Across the Sierra foothills, the maps had begun to sound like a roll call of their countrymen. There was Italian Bar near Columbia, Italian Camp above Sonora, Italian Diggings by Georgetown, Italian Mine in Amador County, and even an Italian Cemetery near Jackson where names ended in vowels rather than silence.

Some of the older miners told them about a picnic ground called Italian Society Park, where men once raised glasses to Garibaldi and sang songs of a homeland they could never quite leave behind. Grocers, bakers, and barbers set up shop in mining towns that rose and fell with the price of gold. By the 1860s, there were Italian saloons in Placerville, pasta on menus in Mokelumne Hill, and a deli in Angels Camp that served wine from barrels rolled across the mountains on mule carts.

For many readers, this may come as a surprise. Most stories about Italians in America begin decades later — with the poor Southern Italian and Sicilian immigrants who arrived through Ellis Island, glimpsed the Statue of Liberty, and built new lives in crowded tenements of New York, Boston, or New Jersey. Yet long before that tide, northern Italians from Liguria, Piedmont, and Tuscany had already carved their names into California’s mountainsides. They came west not as factory laborers but as craftsmen, miners, and farmers who believed that fortune was something you coaxed from the soil.

To later generations, these names might seem like curiosities — fragments left behind by wanderers. But to men like Giuseppe and Antonio, they were proof that Italians had helped build California’s story, even if the schoolbooks would forget to mention it. “Every name on a map,” Giuseppe once said, “is a prayer that stuck.”

And in the quiet between the creeks, those prayers still held.

The Price of Foreign Blood

 The Collector

The man with the ledger came at noon, when the creek flashed like a knife and tempers bent easily. He wore a bowler hat too stiff for weather like this and a black coat already powdered with dust. He did not need a star on his vest; the book in his hands did the work of a badge.

“Foreign Miners’ Tax,” he announced, as if the words were a recipe and all he needed was the right amount of flour.

Giuseppe wiped his palm on his trousers and stepped forward. “We have no claim,” he said in decent English. “We cook. We sharpen. We are not miners.”

The collector’s pen hovered. His eyes skimmed faces, skin, the rosary on Giuseppe’s chest. “You are foreign,” he said finally, as though summarizing a sermon. He tapped the ledger. “And you are in possession of opportunity. That constitutes a claim in spirit, if not in law.”

“Then the whole sky is a claim,” Antonio muttered in Italian.

“Speak English,” the man said mildly, as if offering a kindness.

“We do,” Giuseppe replied, smiling with only half his mouth. “When it’s worth it.”

Coins clicked into the ledger’s shadow. The collector’s pen scraped, a small sound that irritated the ear like a gnat. He tore a chit and left it fluttering in their stew pot like a dead moth.

When he had gone, Seamus wandered over, read the chit, and snorted. “They’ll tax the air if they can, and the accent if they can’t.”

“What do we do?” Antonio asked.

“Same as you’ve done,” Seamus said, “until there’s something else to do.”

Giuseppe tucked the chit inside his shirt, close to the rosary, two pieces of faith that did not agree with one another but that might both keep a man alive.

 The Tongue You Hide

They began to rehearse their mouths. At the edge of cookfires, in line at supply wagons, they combed their speech until the roundness of Liguria shaved down to the flatter angles of California.

“Joe,” Giuseppe tried one evening, the name sitting in his mouth like a coin he did not recognize.

“Tony,” Antonio answered, grimacing.

“Only to strangers,” Giuseppe said. “God knows us otherwise.”

They practiced particular sentences: How much? and On credit? and We have paid. They learned to keep their Italian for the rows of tents where the lanterns turned the canvas into thin yellow chapels. They learned to nod instead of argue. They learned to smile with their cheeks and keep their teeth for biting bread.

At the chapel, the priest scolded them gently. “Do not shorten what God made,” he said. “A name is a vessel.”

“Padre,” Giuseppe replied, “we are not pouring it out. We are putting a cork in it until the wind dies.”

The priest sighed and made a cross over both their heads, as if to bless the cork.

 Fire in the Ravine

The riot did not start in their camp, but the wind carried it.

Seamus ran past at dusk, breath white in the cooling air. “Keep your heads down,” he said. “Somebody told somebody else that the Chileans struck a pocket.”

“But they have no claim,” Antonio said.

Seamus flashed a humorless smile. “That doesn’t matter to the men who think all the gold belongs to them.” He was gone before Giuseppe could ask more.

The shouting started as a quarrel and thickened into something with weight. Torches sprang up. Moonlight cut faces into knives. The Chilean family—the baby now a shriek—ran past their tent through brush that clawed and bit. A knot of men followed, their voices studded with words that did not need translating: Foreign. Thieves. Go back.

“Stay,” Giuseppe said, pushing Antonio behind him, because a man can forget the value of his own life when someone else’s is threatened.

A bottle sailed, shattered, stitched the night with fire. Another bottle. Then flame took the dry grass and ran with it along the ravine, hungry and stupid and immune to reason.

“Water!” a voice cried, too late. The Chinese tent flared—a bright breath and then nothing. Li Ming sprang forward with a blanket; smoke coiled him like a serpent. He coughed, stumbled, went down.

Giuseppe lunged. Antonio was quicker. He dragged Li Ming by the collar into the band of shadow behind a boulder and shoved the blanket over him; Giuseppe poured their entire day’s water on the cloth until steam rose. Embers kissed Antonio’s forearms and left little red mouths.

“Fools!” a rider shouted from the ridge, seeing the fire spread beyond his intentions. “You’ll burn your own dam!”

Water lines formed, too late and too thin. By midnight the fire had eaten what it could. The men who lit it had vanished like foxes. In the pink ash morning, the Sieli brothers and Seamus and a Mexican named Tomás lifted blackened posts and counted what had been lost. The priest came with a crock of salve. Li Ming woke, coughed, blinked. He touched the blanket he had been wrapped in, then the rosary at Giuseppe’s throat, and nodded once, grave as a bow.

“Beppe,” Antonio said, later, fingers around his coffee tin so the heat could convince him he was still here to feel anything at all, “if we stay, they will kill us because they are bored or drunk or wicked. And if we fight, they will kill us faster.”

Giuseppe stared at their grindstone, at his battered stew pot, at the scorched line on the ground where their neighbor’s life had ended and then begun again. “So we do not stay,” he said, surprised by how much relief the words brought even as they hurt his pride. “We do not die for a river that gives us nothing.”

That afternoon, he went to the saloon with the sign. A boy was sweeping the porch. Giuseppe set a sack of coins on the rail.

“For a barrel,” he said. “Whiskey. For a man whose house burned.” The boy looked at his face, at the rosary, at the coins. He swallowed, then disappeared inside. The barrel thumped onto the boards. Giuseppe rolled it away without once asking permission to be on the porch. It was a small disobedience. It was enough.

 The Argument and the Pact

They sold the grindstone to a blacksmith who did not ask questions. They traded stew for canvas, for a mule with a temper, for nails. Seamus stood by the road at dawn with his hands jammed in his pockets.

“You’re making a mistake,” he said. “There’s gold here. Somewhere.”

“There is hatred here,” Antonio replied.

“There is hatred everywhere.”

Giuseppe shook Seamus’s hand. “Come visit us when you are ready to be poor in a different way.”

Seamus laughed, then swallowed the rest of it. He pressed a tin cross into Giuseppe’s palm, roughly soldered and a little crooked. “For the road,” he said. “It’s not holy. I made it myself. But it’s metal, and it might remind you you’ve got friends who hammer iron for a living.”

On the wagon seat, the argument rose and fell like breath.

“We are running,” Antonio said.

“We are choosing,” Giuseppe answered.

“We are leaving what we came for.”

“We are giving it a new name.”

They did not speak for a while, letting the wheels grind their disagreement into the ruts. Then Antonio said, “If we fail there, do we come back here and die?”

“If we fail there,” Giuseppe said, “we fail closer to bread.”

“Va bene,” Antonio murmured, not because he agreed but because he loved his brother and had chosen him already at sea.

Blood and Soil in the Southwest

Evening settled over the valley like a shawl.
The day’s heat bled away, leaving only the smell of vine sap and dust.
Giuseppe stirred beans in the pot while Antonio split kindling, both too tired to speak.
When the wagon came clattering down the lane, its wheels coughing dust, they looked up as one.

“Buenas noches, amigos,” called the driver. He sat high on the bench, hat wide, jacket trimmed with silver thread. “¿Puedo descansar un rato? The horses are tired—and so am I.”

Giuseppe blinked, catching half the words. “You… rest, sì. Sit. Fire is for all men.”

The stranger climbed down, boots creaking. “Gracias. I am Don Rafael Uribe, from Los Ángeles. Trader, not bandido, I swear it.” He laughed, a deep, easy sound that rolled like wine in a cup.

Antonio wiped his hands. “Antonio Sieli. This my brother, Giuseppe. From Liguria… near Genova.”
He tapped his chest. “Some call it Italia, but—too many kings for one country.”

“Ah—Genovés!” Don Rafael grinned. “I have known men from there. Good with ships. Better with wine.” He showed perfect teeth. “You came far, hermanos.”

They ate together, sharing bread, beans, and a skin of rough red. The Californio spoke English the way a guitar speaks French—soft and half-sung. The Sielis answered in English that bent toward their mother tongue—rounded vowels, lost articles, hands doing half the talking.

“You like this valley?” Rafael asked.
“It is quiet,” Giuseppe said. “Too big, maybe. Sky make you small.”
Rafael nodded. “Sí. But the soil is generous. Give her water, she will remember you kindly.”

He poured another cup. “You know, this is not the first time men from your shores planted vines here.”

Antonio frowned. “No? Others before us?”

“Sí. Long before. One from your Liguria, Giovanni Battista Leandri. We called him Don Juan Leandry.
Married a Californio woman—Doña María Francesca Uribe, my mother’s cousin. Owned Rancho Los Coyotes and Cañada de la Habra.
Spoke Spanish like music from the sea. Always rolling his r’s too much, but the ladies liked it.”
Rafael chuckled. “He changed his name, though. Said it helped the neighbors trust him. Here, you must sound like the land to belong to it.”

Antonio grinned. “So maybe we call ourselves Antonio y Giuseppe Sieli-something? Make the people trust, eh?”

Rafael laughed.“If you marry a Californio woman, you won’t need the something.”

From the far side of the fire, the traveling priest smiled. His accent was thick, his English gentle as smoke. “There was another from our part of the world,” he said. “A Jesuit, Eusebio Kino. Rode north from Sonora before any of this was California. Built missions, taught the Indians to keep cattle, to plant vines. Died in the saddle, poor man, still mapping the desert.”

Rafael crossed himself. “They still tell his story in the old missions. El padre de los caballos.”

Giuseppe listened, half in wonder. “So even before us, men from Liguria walk this ground.”

The priest nodded. “And prayers in your tongue mixing with theirs. That is how a country is made.”

They sat in silence then, the fire crackling.

Rafael strummed a few notes on a small guitar, humming an old canción:

Ay, mi tierra dorada, que guarda mil nombres en tu piel…

—oh, my golden land that keeps a thousand names in your skin.

Giuseppe did not know the words, but he felt them. He poured another small cup and raised it. “A la tierra,” he said awkwardly. “To… the land.”

Rafael smiled. “A la tierra, sí. And to those who love her.”

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The Changing Wind

When the moon rose, the fire had burned low.
Out beyond the rows, wagon wheels rattled faintly from the main road—
a new kind of sound: iron rims, heavier teams, voices not shaped by Spanish or Ligurian,
but the hard-edged drawl of the North.

“Those,” Rafael said quietly, “are the new men. Los Americanos.
They come with papers, not prayers.”

Giuseppe frowned. “Papers?”

“Titles. Claims. They say all this land belongs to Washington now.
They call us greasers and dagos both.
To them, Catholic means foreign, and dark hair means suspect.”
He spat into the dust. “They do not ask whose vines were planted first.”

Antonio said, “But we are free men now, sì? No Spain, no Mexico, no king.”

Rafael gave a short, bitter laugh. “Freedom is a fine word, amigo. It just costs more each year.”

The priest sighed. “Already they send for Protestant ministers.
The old missions stand empty.
In Los Ángeles they tear the saints from the walls and hang flags in their place.”

Tomás, who had been listening, said softly, “My uncle was whipped in town last month.
An American said he looked at his wife too long.”

Giuseppe clenched his jaw. “In Liguria we had Austrians, same way.
They think they own the air we breathe.”

Rafael looked at him across the flames. “Then you understand. The faces change, the boots change, but the pride stays the same. You and I, hermano, we must grow deep roots if we are to last the next storm.”

The night stretched long after that. The song died. Only the sound of the wind remained—dry, restless, moving through the vines like an omen.

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Echoes

At dawn the travelers rode out, their wagon fading into the pale distance. The brothers stayed by the cooling ashes, watching light spill over the fields.

Antonio said, “You think he is right—this place, it change?”

Giuseppe nodded slowly. “Yes. But the soil—she not care who shout the loudest. Only who stay to tend her.”

Tomás hitched up the mule. “My abuela said that Leandry’s grapes made peace between neighbors. Maybe yours will too, patrón.”

Giuseppe smiled faintly. “Eh, if the wine is good enough.”

The morning wind smelled of dust and cut grass.
Giuseppe took a handful of earth, rubbed it between his palms, and whispered, “Che la terra ci tenga bene. May the land hold us kindly.”

Antonio added in slow, broken English, “And may she remember us fair.”

The wind carried their words away—north toward the towns where new flags flew, and south toward the old missions, where bells rusted in silence. The land, as always, listened without reply.

The Valley Receives Them

Morning came thin and gray, the kind of light that hides as much as it reveals. A wind had blown from the north all night, dry and sharp, scattering ash across the bare rows. By the time Giuseppe stepped outside, a fine dust had settled on the posts and stakes,
as if the valley were testing his resolve.

Down the road came three riders—strangers. Their coats were long and dark, their hats too clean for men who worked the land. They dismounted near the creek without a greeting, speaking in a clipped, nasal English that bent none of the vowels the way the Sielis did.

“Surveyors,” Antonio muttered, watching them unfold a map. He went back to driving stakes, though his hammering slowed.

Giuseppe wiped his hands on his trousers and walked toward them.

“Buon giorno,” he said. Then, remembering, “Good day. You need something?”

The tallest of the men pointed at the field with his pencil. “This section here—quarter-section C, Township Ten. You got a claim filed on it?”

Giuseppe frowned. “Claim?”

The man’s tone hardened. “Land claim. Patent. Filed with the U.S. Land Office in Stockton.”

Giuseppe shook his head slowly. “No paper. We find empty ground, no fence, no man. We plant.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “Then it isn’t yours. Not yet.” He flipped the map shut and tucked it under his arm. “Word of advice—don’t plant too deep until you’ve seen the office. These valleys are going fast.”

He swung into the saddle and nodded to his companions. “We’ll be back through next month. Try to learn the language by then.”

They laughed as they rode off, the sound of the horses scattering the crows.

Antonio kicked the dirt. “They talk like they already own the sky.”

Giuseppe said nothing. He looked at the rows they had just begun, neat but fragile, and at the wide, flat valley beyond—endless, unclaimed, unpromised.

“Maybe they do,” he said at last. “But we have the earth. Sky change, wind change—earth stay.”

---

Tomás arrived that afternoon with a wagonload of tools borrowed from a ranchero near Stockton.
He looked uneasy. “They say the Americans come with papers,” he said. “Big ones, with stamps. They carry them like weapons.”

Giuseppe took a hoe from the wagon and studied the handle. “We carry this,” he said quietly. “Different weapon.”

Tomás smiled thinly. “They’ll make counties soon. New names. New rules. They already talk of calling this one Fresno.” He pronounced it the Californio way—softly, like Frésno, a word of shade and trees.

Giuseppe nodded. “Then we plant before they finish naming it.”

---

Later That Season

The first vines took root in dust and prayer. They dug trenches by hand, filled them with water from the ditch, and prayed the cuttings would take before the sun found them again.

By midsummer, tiny leaves had appeared—green against the brown plain. Antonio crossed himself each morning when he saw them, as though they were children. The priest from the nearby mission came once a month on his mule, blessing the vines and leaving them with a loaf of coarse bread and a quiet warning.

“They are making new laws,” he said in his heavy accent. “Foreigners may not keep what they plant unless they swear before an American judge.” He looked at the brothers with kind but tired eyes. “Be careful who writes your names.”

Giuseppe smiled faintly. “Names change easy. Vines stay.”

The priest nodded, half in sorrow, half in faith, and rode off toward the west.

---

Harvest came sooner than they expected, though there was little to harvest.
A few baskets of small grapes, bitter but alive.
They crushed them by hand in an old barrel, barefoot and laughing,
pretending it was a feast.

That night they sat on the porch, passing a single bottle of young, cloudy wine.
Antonio stared out toward the road,
where lanterns now glowed in the distance—
the lights of newcomers building their square houses and white churches.

“They come like rain,” he said quietly.
Giuseppe nodded. “Rain make the weeds grow first.”

Tomás laughed under his breath. “But the weeds go shallow. You go deep.”

Giuseppe smiled at that, not from pride but from recognition.
He poured the last of the wine into the cup and raised it toward the dark horizon.

“To those who stay,” he said.
Antonio added, “And to those who remember.”

They drank, and for a while the sound of the crickets filled the silence where words could not.

The New Masters of the West

The year 1850 cracked California open like a river bursting its banks. Men came not to live but to take — gold from rivers, timber from mountains, names from maps. The American flag rose over the missions, and the old bells rang out for the last time before falling silent. What had been a Spanish colony, then a Mexican frontier, became a territory of the United States almost overnight. The land was still brown and wide, but the air had changed. Words like title, patent, and tax carried a new power, and men who spoke with accents — Spanish, Irish, Ligurian, or Chinese — learned to bow their heads before a clerk who spoke only English.

In the towns, signs changed first.
La Plaza became Main Street.
El Río de las Santas Ánimas became Dry Creek.
Saints were replaced by saints of another kind: Jackson, Polk, Fremont. The new rulers distrusted anything too foreign, too Catholic, too dark. A man’s faith or surname could cost him his land. The Californios, who once measured wealth by cattle and honor, now counted it in paper stamped by Washington. Their adobe houses sagged beside the new wooden storefronts that smelled of kerosene and sawdust.

In the valley, the Sieli brothers heard none of the speeches nor the laws that passed in faraway halls. They heard only the wind and the soft click of vines growing. But history was already writing their names in smaller letters, and before long, the soil that welcomed them would ask what kind of men they had chosen to become.

Community (and the Lack of It)

The town took note of them as one takes note of a fencepost: useful if it holds, in the way if it does not. Some Anglos waved. Many did not. A man named Ezekiel Crowe—tall, tight, with a beard like a brush dipped in bitterness—set himself up as the voice of the valley’s conscience and told anyone who would listen that papists were building a secret kingdom one rosary at a time.

“They worship statues,” he said on a corner one afternoon as the Sieli wagon went by with barrels for water. “They will bring the Pope’s law over the mountains on their beads.”

Antonio reined the mule, opened his mouth, and Giuseppe touched his wrist. “Ask him to come for supper,” Giuseppe said, low.

“What?”

“Ask him to break bread with us.”

Antonio stared, then barked a short laugh. “And poison him?”

“Feed him polenta with cheese and a sauce of tomatoes he has never tasted and hope that God has made his tongue before his mind.”

Antonio did not call out. But that night, when their neighbor Mrs. Pérez brought eggs and the latest tidings about whose fences had fallen and who had married whom, Giuseppe asked, “How far is it to the little chapel?”

“Two miles if you cut across the ditch,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “Four if you take the road like a gentleman.”

They walked the two miles on Sunday, dust powdering their boots like flour. The chapel was adobe, white as a tooth from a distance and brown as coffee up close where hands had repaired it. A young priest with a Genoa nose and a California tan welcomed them with a pressure that hurt in the best way.

“Bianchi,” he said. “Matteo. And you—your faces,” he said, eyes bright with that joy that arrives before propriety, “I know their cousins. Where are you from?”

“Liguria,” Giuseppe said.

“Ah,” Father Bianchi breathed, as if the word were wine, “then you know hills and hunger. You will do well here.”

Outside the door afterward, Ezekiel Crowe and his small congregation perched like buzzards on a fence, hymns poised on their tongues as weapons rather than offerings. The priest nodded to them. The Sielis tipped their hats. No one said papist or heathen out loud that day because the weather was too hot for a fight.

 Flood, Drought, and the Algebra of Failure

That first winter the river rose gentle, then greedy. One night, rain wrote its own gospel on the roof so loudly you could not hear yourself think. By morning, muddy water had taken the low rows and rubbed away the edges of the field as if it meant to erase the Sielis as a mistake. The brothers waded waist-deep to lift vines that had not yet learned to hold on. They built small dikes and watched the river laugh at their geometry.

The spring after—the pendulum swung. The sky forgot how to sweat. Wind came out of the north with a grit-teeth whistle, and by August it felt like the sun had set up a forge inside their chest. They hauled water in barrels until their shoulders howled. They shaded what they could with burlap. They learned the brutal arithmetic of farming: how much loss you could bear and still count it as survival.

One evening, when the mule had finally learned which rows not to nibble and the creek had learned to be a creek again, Tomás—the Mexican from Placerville, a man who had drifted south like a seed and taken root near Fresno—knocked at their door. Behind him stood his wife, Lucía, and a girl of six with a ribbon in her hair too big for any purpose except joy.

“We heard the vines fought the flood and the drought,” Tomás said, smiling. He held up a basket of peaches the size of saints’ hearts. “These won their war. Share?”

They ate together at a table that had once been a packing crate. Lucía told stories in a Spanish soft as dusk; Father Bianchi stopped by and blessed the food and then stayed to tell of a man in Rome who had argued with the Pope and lost, which seemed to comfort him. When they stood to go, Lucía kissed the girls on their heads—girls who had not had names when we began this chapter and now insisted on themselves: Rosa, who collected pebbles; and Caterina, who learned to run before she learned to walk.

After the door shut, Antonio sat without moving for a long time.

“What is it?” Giuseppe asked.

“I am listening,” Antonio said.

“To what?”

“To the sound of us being allowed to exist.”

The Reunion from the Sea

It took nearly five years of saving every spare coin before Giuseppe and Antonio could send for their wives. Letters had crossed the ocean like prayers folded in bottles—each one written in cramped script, stained with vineyard dust and hope. “The vines grow, the house stands, and we dream of the day we are not two but four again,” Giuseppe wrote. When the reply finally came, sealed with trembling hands from Genoa, it carried the words they had longed to read: “We will come.”

That winter, the Sieli brothers stood at the port of San Francisco as a steamship from Liguria pulled through the fog. The women who stepped off looked older and smaller than the memories they had kept, but their eyes—those same patient, sea-colored eyes—held steady. Lucia ran to Antonio first, clutching the rosary that had crossed two oceans; Maria found Giuseppe and pressed her face into his chest as if to make up for all the years absence had stolen. When they reached the vineyard days later, the women wept to see the vines alive in foreign soil. “They remember home,” Maria whispered, brushing a leaf with her fingers. Giuseppe smiled. “Then they are like us,” he said. “Rooted in new earth, but still faithful to the old.”

That night, they shared their first meal together under the sycamores—a loaf of bread, wine from the first vintage, and laughter that made the valley seem less empty.

 First Wine

The third autumn brought grapes that tasted like arguments resolved. The clusters lay in their hands with the weight of small animals; the skins bled purple on their palms; the seeds cracked like tiny promises under their teeth.

They crushed in a makeshift vat with their ankles stained like sinners. The children squealed. Lucía laughed and shook her head: Esta gente de Liguria with their feet in everything. They pitched yeast as Bellosio’s cousin had instructed. They watched the airlock blurp like a heartbeat. They waited, ferociously.

On a cool evening in late October, when the light lay low and slow across the rows, Giuseppe pulled a sample from the barrel with a thief he had fashioned from cut cane. He held the glass up. The liquid caught the last sun and made it an argument for mercy.

“To the men who drove us out,” Antonio said, and then felt the meanness of it and tried again. “To the men who drove us on.”

“To the hands that held,” Giuseppe added, thinking of Seamus, of Li Ming, of Tomás, of Mrs. Pérez and her eggs, of Father Bianchi and his tired laugh, of the Yokuts woman who had nodded fractionally by the river and then gone on with her life.

They drank. The wine was rough at the edges and sweet at the center, like a good man. They coughed once, grinned like thieves, and filled another glass.

They sold three barrels to a tavern with a proprietor who swore he could not spell Sieli but who could count the coins he owed them. They rolled a fourth barrel into town and left a jug with Mrs. Pérez. They carried a fifth to the chapel and left it in the shade with a note: Per la festa.

When they passed Ezekiel Crowe’s farm on the way back, he stood by his fence with his arms folded, his beard in what might have been thought. For the first time since they had arrived, he did not speak.

 The Kitchen Table Testament

The speech had been growing all season without Giuseppe knowing it, a vine of sentences winding around his ribs. It ripened the evening the first cold breeze moved under the door.

The children gathered at the kitchen table under lamplight that made halos and shadows of their hair. Rosa traced the grain in the wood with her finger as if reading a map. Caterina swung her legs and hit the chair rung in a steady clunk that dared anyone to stop her.

Giuseppe set his hands on the table palms-down. They were hands that had known salt, ash, splinters, and grape skin, and had loved each of them.

“You will hear stories,” he began, his voice even, not moralizing, just offering. “You will hear men tell you that this place makes everyone equal. You will hear them speak of gold as if it has a conscience. You will hear them tell you that if you suffer, it is because you deserve it.”

Antonio stood by the hearth with his shoulder against the wall, watching his brother more closely than he watched the flame. The priest had said once that some men were born to homilies and others to hammers. Giuseppe, though he could be both, leaned toward the former tonight.

“When we came,” Giuseppe said, “they called us names that were meant to make us smaller. Dago. Garlic eater. Papist. They nailed signs to doors, and sometimes those signs were as sharp as knives. In the mountains, men were burned out, beaten, hanged, and no one wrote their names down afterward, so it was as if they had not been.”

He paused. Caterina’s legs stilled.

“We did not become brave men,” he said. “We became careful ones. We hid our voices when we needed to. We cooked and sharpened and prayed like thieves who knew God would still hear them if they whispered.”

Rosa glanced at Antonio’s forearms, at the little red mouths where sparks had kissed him. She looked back at her father.

“The gold,” Giuseppe said, “was never ours. Perhaps because we did not belong to it. Perhaps because we refused to belong to a thing that asked for our souls before it offered a crust of bread. But the soil—” he spread his fingers on the table as if feeling it there—“the soil is a different master. It punishes without malice. It rewards without flattery. It requires patience and pays in seasons.”

He reached for the jug and poured into little cups not because the Church would have approved but because the world had taught him that children must be inducted into sacraments or they will grow up believing they are only spectators to other people’s faiths.

“Drink,” he said. “Just a little. Taste what your name can do.”

They sipped, grimaced, then smiled because to be included in a ritual is sweeter than sugar. Antonio took his cup and lifted it a finger’s width.

“To the men who did not kill us,” he said dryly, and the room loosened with laughter. “And to the vines that learned our names.”

Giuseppe nodded. “And listen,” he added, more quietly, the last of the speech tightening like a knot that will hold when dragged. “Belonging is never free. It must be earned, and even then, it can be taken away. You must be ready to pay, and you must be ready to lose. But you must also be ready to plant again and again, knowing some hands will push your seedlings over and some hands will lift them. Know the difference. Bless the latter. Endure the former. And keep your rosary where your enemies can see it, so they will know you know exactly who you are.”

There was a little silence after that—not heavy, just dignified. Outside, wind moved in the vines with the self-importance of a bishop, and the sycamores translated it into a softer language.

Caterina resumed thumping the chair rung. Rosa asked, “Papa, will the gold ever be ours?”

“The gold?” Giuseppe said. He smiled, small and sad and honest. “No, little one. But the grapes—these will be ours, and yours, if you keep faith with them. And that is a kind of wealth the river cannot take.”

 Coda: A Sign Comes Down

A year later, Seamus O’Rourke arrived dusty and thinner, a small sack over his shoulder and a healed scar splitting his eyebrow. He smelled the fermenting room and laughed.

“I told you there was gold,” he said, accepting a cup.

“You did,” Antonio admitted, clapping him on the shoulder, “but you got the color wrong.”

Seamus leaned in. “Did you hear,” he said, eyes sliding sideways with pleasure, “in Placerville somebody tore down a sign.”

“Which sign?” Giuseppe asked, though he knew.

“The one that confused a people with a slur.” Seamus drank and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “A fiddler’s bow sawed it right off, I’m told.”

“Good wood for a fire,” Antonio said.

“No,” Seamus replied. “They nailed it back up with a different word underneath. It says Welcome. And someone, maybe a man with hammer’s hands, took a punch and chased the old letters till they looked like they were learning to be new ones.”

He set the tin cross he had once given Giuseppe back on the table, newly straightened and polished.

“Figured you might want it back,” he said, and then added, as if to make nothing of it, “You didn’t. I just wanted to see if it would shine.”

Giuseppe ran his thumb over the metal and felt, beneath the polish, every blow that had made it true.

“Stay,” he said. “There’s room. Not much. Just enough.”

Seamus looked out at the rows, at the way the late sun combed them into gold. His grin came slow and sure. “I think I’ve held a pick long enough,” he said. “Let me see what it is to hold a pruning knife.”

They went out together into the evening, the three of them, and the vines listened the way old friends do—half-amused, wholly forgiving, ready to teach if the men were ready to learn.

The Flag and the Fire

“We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.”
— Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1861

“Italy is made, now it remains to make Italians.”
— Massimo d’Azeglio, 1861

“What is a nation, if not a people bound by memory, language, and sacrifice?”
— Pietro Borsieri, c. 1840s

The year 1861 reached California with the scent of wet soil and faraway triumph. Word traveled slowly from Europe, crossing oceans and deserts in folded newspapers and travelers’ mouths: Italy was finally united. Garibaldi’s redshirts had marched, kings had fallen, and the tricolor—green, white, and red—flew above Rome’s dreams, if not yet its stones.

Antonio spread the paper across the kitchen table, its corners held down by spoons. The ink was smudged, but the names were clear enough—Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi. “Italy,” he said, sounding the word like something borrowed. “A real nation. Imagine that.”

Giuseppe looked up from his workbench, where he was mending a cracked barrel hoop. “I can imagine it,” he said, “but I can’t yet believe it. All my life, we were Ligurians. Genoese. Sardinians. Piedmontese. Never ‘Italians.’”

Seamus leaned in from the doorway, pipe glowing faintly. “Aye, and now you are all one people,” he said, teasing. “A flag, a king, and a fight to remember.”

“Garibaldi,” Antonio said with a half-smile. “The hero of two worlds.”

“Or a mercenary,” Giuseppe muttered. “Depends who’s paying.”

Seamus laughed. “You sound like an Englishman. The man fought for liberty in South America, in Italy, even offered to fight for Lincoln! That’s no hired sword—that’s a soul on fire.”

Giuseppe wiped his hands and sat down. “A soul on fire burns hot enough to blind. Some say he’s a Mason, others say a soldier of fortune. He loves the fight too much.”

From the hearth, Lucia spoke without turning. “And yet, he fought to make our homeland one.” She stirred the pot slowly, her voice quiet but sure. “After a thousand years of division, that counts for something.”

Antonio nodded. “She’s right. A man doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful. I don’t care who paid him, so long as the flag flies.”

“The flag,” Giuseppe repeated, leaning back. “I saw a sketch of it once. Green for the fields, white for faith, red for the blood shed. A good flag. Maybe even a holy one.”
He looked out the window toward the vines, their winter skeletons standing proud in the wind. “Still, it feels strange to be proud of a country we no longer live in.”

Lucia smiled faintly. “We plant here, but our roots remember there.”

Seamus raised his cup. “To Italy, then,” he said. “And to America, her stubborn cousin.”

Giuseppe returned the toast. “To both,” he said, and after a moment added, “But mostly to this soil, because it keeps us fed.”

They laughed, and the conversation turned to whether Italy’s new king would care for men like them—the farmers, the laborers, the forgotten poor who built kingdoms but never sat at their tables.

Antonio shrugged. “Maybe this time will be different. Maybe uniting the flag will unite the people.”

Giuseppe’s eyes darkened with thought. “Maybe. But I’ve learned something here, brother. No king, no priest, no general will save us. The vineyard saves us. Work saves us. Faith and patience, like the vine—they bear fruit if tended.”

Lucia poured wine into their cups, red as the new Italian flag. “Then we’ll keep tending,” she said softly. “For both our homes.”

Though Italy had become one, the Sielis had already found their nation in the rows they planted and the promise they kept: that the land, wherever it lay, would always answer to those who loved it enough to stay.

 The Man on the Rope

The rumor came running the way rumor does—mouth to ear, ear to fear, fear to feet. By the time it reached the Sieli tent, it had learned new adjectives and a taste for speed.

“Jackson,” Seamus said, white around the lips. “Claim dispute. Foreign fellow. Maybe Chilean. Maybe Italian. They’ve tied a knot.”

The road to Jackson was a ribbon with rocks for teeth. The brothers and Seamus took it anyway, because some things must be seen or a man spends the rest of his life arguing with the ghosts of what might have been.

They reached the square to find it already arranged like a stage: a cart rolled under the old oak, the rope licking the branch. Men in shirtsleeves, arms browned by labor and belief. A preacher with a voice heavy on judgment and light on mercy. A woman with her mouth set in a hard line that tried to hold back tears and failed.

The man on the cart was young. His hair clung to his forehead. His shirt was torn where someone had counted his ribs with a fist. He did not speak English well, but fear translates. He said, “Please,” and then he said something else in a language that was not English and not Italian, and every mother on the edge of the crowd knew it meant I am not ready to die.

A foreman type—vest, chain across his belly—read from a paper in a tone that made law sound like a hammer. “Caught stealing another man’s claim. Assaulted a citizen. Found guilty by a committee of good men.”

“Good men do not need committees,” Antonio said before he could stop himself.

A murmur. Heads turned. Seamus’s hand closed on Antonio’s sleeve.

The priest from Jackson—older than Father Bianchi, with a face like the bark of the oak—stepped forward and asked to speak with the condemned. The foreman waved him up with the benevolence of a man who enjoys the shape of his own power.

The priest climbed onto the cart, bowed his head close, murmured the words every Catholic learns to keep behind his teeth for a day like this. He finished, pressed his thumb to the young man’s brow, and then turned, seeking faces in the crowd that might yet remember being human.

“Mercy,” he said softly, as if trying a door he already knew was locked. “Once, if not twice.”

“Too late,” the foreman said, and glanced at the man with the rope.

Giuseppe stepped forward, heart thudding, and held up both hands. “The committee has condemned a man,” he said, forcing the words across the stones of his tongue, “but the law has not spoken. Let him wait for a judge.”

“We are the judge,” the foreman said.

“You are a crowd,” Giuseppe answered, and heard the whisper ripple, admiration and anger braided tight. “What will you do when it is the wrong man?”

“We will be swift next time,” the preacher said, pleased with the cleverness of it.

The noose kissed the young man’s throat. The cart rolled forward like a thought a man thinks and then cannot take back. The body dropped. The world held its breath to see if God would intervene. He did not. He was busy counting sparrows.

Someone cheered. Someone retched. The priest wept openly. A child laughed because sometimes children laugh when the air tears, and the sound went through Giuseppe like a nail.

They cut him down after, because death is not supposed to be comfortable. The foreman removed his hat, because his mother had taught him manners. The woman with the hard mouth closed the dead boy’s eyes, because she remembered being sixteen and because her own son would be, one day.

On the way back to camp, the road seemed longer. Antonio did not speak. Seamus walked as if he were counting steps, a prayer he made up on the spot and promised to never say again.

At the creek, Li Ming handed Giuseppe a cup of tea without a word. It tasted like leaves and mercy. He drank, and some of the iron in his throat dissolved.

 The Vigilance Committee

The paper came a week later, handbill ink still tacky. Vigilance Committee Formed to Protect Honest Men. Names at the bottom: familiar from saloon doors, from the rigging of scaffold ropes, from pews.

“They mean to borrow a badge from themselves,” Seamus said, flipping the sheet back to the table. “So they can fine, hang, and call it holy.”

“What does it mean for us?” Antonio asked.

Giuseppe pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture he had learned from his father when the weather and the vines conspired. “It means the law now has the exact same mustache as the men we argued with last week.”

“So it means hide better,” Seamus said grimly.

It meant more than that. It meant they learned to walk together at dusk and not alone. It meant they timed errands so they would not be seen in the square after the preacher’s dinner bell. It meant they kept their chits in order and their heads lower than their hats.

 The Naming

The clerk in Fresno asked, as clerks always do, “Family name?”

Giuseppe looked at Antonio. The brothers said together, “Sieli.”

The clerk wrote Sieli and then, beneath it, Shelly, because his ear was lazy and his pencil quicker than his attention.

“Do we correct him?” Antonio asked on the steps, paper warm in his hand.

Giuseppe folded the document and tucked it against his heart. “The vines know our name,” he said. “The rest will catch up.”

11) The Mass for the Unnamed

On the anniversary of the day in Jackson, the Sielis brought a jug to the adobe chapel. The priest said a Mass for the soul of the young man, because God does not require a surname to find a person. Seamus, who had drifted south and returned sometimes with a grin and sometimes with a bruise, stood at the back, head lowered in a way that made him look taller.

Afterward, they poured a little wine at the chapel door, a libation not sanctioned in any book Bianchi owned. He said nothing, because he understood that men must sometimes instruct their own dead.

“Mercy,” Giuseppe said quietly. “Once, if not twice.”

“Twice,” the priest answered. “If not always.”

 The Lesson at the Table

That winter, when the vines slept the way soldiers sleep—one eye open, a hand on the hilt—Giuseppe told the children what the tax had cost. Money, yes. Dignity, more. Fear, most. He told them of the ledger and the rope and the preacher’s clever cruelty. He told them of the priest’s thumb on a brow and of the way a woman can do what a crowd cannot: close the eyes of the innocent without lying.

“Why did they hate us?” Rosa asked, scrubbing at a grease spot on the table as if it were the question itself.

“Because we made them feel as if the world belonged to more people than they were comfortable with,” Giuseppe said. “Because our prayers are shaped differently. Because our dinners smell like garlic. Because their fathers told them the world is small and fragile and must be guarded by suspicion.”

“And because of gold,” Caterina added, wise beyond what is fair.

“And because of gold,” Giuseppe agreed.

He poured a measure of the third-year wine and spread his hands over it as if warming them. “We answer with soil,” he said. “We answer with vines. We answer by staying. We answer with our names, long when we can afford them, short when we must, never absent.”

Antonio lifted his cup. “To the price of foreign blood,” he said, not bitterly but very clearly.

Giuseppe lifted his. “And to the harvest that remembers.”

They drank. Outside, frost traced the window with a lace finer than anything shipped around the Horn. The vines, black against the sky, dreamed of sap and sun. The children, who would one day call themselves Sieli or Shelly or something else entirely, memorized the taste of a reply that does not raise its voice and is heard anyway.

Faith in Hostile Soil

The newly built chapel of adobe and timber was more than a place of worship—it was proof that faith could root even in hostile soil. In the spring of 1862, the parish celebrated its first great festa: a Mass of thanksgiving for the harvest and for survival. After the final “Amen,” Father Bianchi led the congregation out into the Fresno dust, a statue of the Blessed Virgin lifted high on a wooden platform carried by the men of the parish, candles flickering despite the wind. Children scattered rose petals. The women sang Ave Maria in voices that wove through the heat like prayer itself.

The brass band struck up When the Saints Go Marching In, the American tune oddly at home beside the Italian hymns. Farmers, ranchers, and field hands followed the banner of St. Joseph down the road, praying the Rosary as they marched.

From across the street, Ezekiel Crowe stood with his small band of Anglo Protestants, their hymnals shut but their mouths open.

“See it?” Crowe shouted. “Told you so! They worship idols! They bow to Rome—the Whore of Babylon!”

Another man spat in the dirt. “Ain’t religion, it’s witchcraft!”

Giuseppe tightened his grip on the pole bearing the parish banner, his knuckles white. “Ignore them,” he whispered. “Christ had His mockers too.”

Father Bianchi, walking at the head, did not flinch. “Pray louder,” he said, and the people obeyed. The Ave Maria rose above the jeers, fragile but unbroken.

As the procession passed the Sieli vineyard, Rosa crossed herself, murmuring, “If they call this idolatry, may God forgive them.”

Antonio glanced back once at Crowe’s sneer. “He fears what he does not understand,” he said.

“And what he cannot control,” Giuseppe replied.

When the parade returned to the churchyard, the crowd shared bread, wine, and laughter beneath the sycamores. The statue of Mary glowed in the sunset like a promise. The insults from earlier seemed to melt into the hum of cicadas.

That night, Father Bianchi wrote in his journal: They tried to drown our song in hatred, but the people sang louder. Perhaps that is the first miracle of this place.

Fire in the Chapel

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Historical Note

Anti-Catholic sentiment ran hot in mid-19th-century America, fueled by the Know-Nothing Party and later vigilante groups. Immigrants—especially Irish, Italian, Mexican, and Portuguese Catholics—were often accused of being “un-American.” In California, this prejudice echoed alongside hostility to the Chinese, Mexicans, and other laborers of color. Secret orders and masked night riders borrowed rituals and intimidation that foreshadowed the Ku Klux Klan of later decades.¹

In towns like Fresno, humble chapels of adobe and pine became lightning rods for fear and violence.

The winter night smelled of smoke before the flames were seen. Rosa Pérez was first to cry out, pointing toward the adobe chapel where Father Matteo Bianchi said Mass. Its whitewashed walls glowed red, and on them were scrawled in tar and pitch:

“WOP.”

The mob—hoods flickering in the firelight, eager for spectacle—circled the chapel with torches raised. Ezekiel Crowe, bitter as ever, shouted over the crackle:

“They worship idols! Rome’s spies, papist traitors! This is our valley, not theirs. America is for Americans!”

At the chapel door stood Father Matteo Bianchi. His cassock was singed at the hem, a bucket in his hands. His voice rang steady:

“You burn not only our church,” he cried, “but your own conscience. This house is mud and straw, yet it holds the prayers of children. Do you fear prayers so much that you must silence them with fire?”

A stone cracked the wall. A voice jeered: “Go back to Rome, papist dog!”

Bianchi crossed himself, his gesture both shield and defiance. “For every beam you burn, we will raise two. For every insult you spit, we will sing louder.”

Antonio and Giuseppe Sieli pushed through the line of onlookers, their faces streaked with ash.

“Basta!” Antonio roared. “This is cowardice!”

Giuseppe lifted his rosary high. “You call us dagos, wops, papists. We are farmers. We break bread with Mexicans, Irish, Chinese. We ask only to till soil God has made. If that makes us enemies, then your enemy is the earth itself.”

The mob faltered. Some lowered torches. Then Seamus O’Rourke’s fiddle rang out—“The Battle Cry of Freedom”—its tune defiant, impossible to ignore. Irish laborers stomped boots in rhythm until the mob’s chant fell apart.

Neighbors argued openly in the firelight:

• Whitcomb the tavern keeper shouted that the Italians kept their debts and their word.

• Crowe thundered that papists bowed to Rome and would one day sell the valley to the Pope, echoing slogans of the Know-Nothing Party.²

• A rancher muttered that fire spread faster than sermons, and a man who burned chapels might burn barns.

Lines were drawn that would not easily fade.

By dawn the chapel was a husk. Yet in front of it, Father Bianchi knelt with his people—Italians, Mexicans, Irish, even Li Ming and his nephews, who had carried water pails though they were not Catholic. Together they prayed in Latin, English, and Spanish, voices weaving into one defiant psalm.

Giuseppe pressed soil into his palm and whispered to his daughters, “The land remembers. If they burn our church, we will build in the vineyard. God is not homeless while we breathe.”

Crowe and the mob rode off at dawn, leaving their slogans blackened on the wall. Rosa Pérez scrubbed until her hands blistered. “They do not get the last word,” she muttered.

That night, Antonio spoke to his brother beneath the sycamores.

“They will come again.”

Giuseppe nodded. “Then we will be here again. Vine by vine, brick by brick. They want us gone. Instead we will plant deeper. The soil will remember—not their hatred, but our endurance.”

And so the Sielis stayed, their faith tested by fire, their roots watered by defiance.

While there is no record of a Catholic chapel in Fresno being burned by hooded vigilantes in the 1850s, such events occurred elsewhere. The Know-Nothings in San Francisco attacked Catholic institutions in the 1850s,³ and anti-Catholic mobs in the East destroyed churches in Philadelphia and Massachusetts. The insults shouted at the Sielis—“wop,” “dago,” “papist”—were drawn directly from the vocabulary of the time. The Sieli family here embodies how immigrant Catholics resisted through faith, solidarity, and the simple act of remaining rooted. 

References

1. Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 58–60.

2. Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 85–89.

3. Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 5.

4. Philip Jenkins, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 41–43.

Chapter 3: Vines in Hostile Soil

 The Paper That Makes It Real

They carried their best jug into town with the caution one reserves for infants and gunpowder. Fresno’s main street wore its dust like a badge. A stray dog slept with one eye open under the water trough. Across from the livery stood a tavern signboard hand-painted with a stag whose antlers had a few more tines than nature intended. Whitcomb’s House.

Inside, it smelled of sawdust and yeast and a recent argument. A piano in the corner nursed a broken key. The proprietor—Mr. Whitcomb himself—polished a glass with a rag that had long ago surrendered its claim on cleanliness. He was a wide-shouldered man with the jaw of an amiable bulldog and the eyes of a bookkeeper who had learned to do arithmetic in his head.

“You’re the Italian grape men,” he said, taking them in—sun-browned faces, the stiffness of men who live at the mercy of weather, the jug that gave itself away by simply existing.

“Ligurians,” Giuseppe offered, because precision is a form of dignity. “We brought something we think your customers may want.”

Whitcomb lifted the jug to the light, as if wine could be inspected the way a bolt of cloth could. “I pay for steady,” he said. “Not surprises.”

“Then you will like this,” Antonio said, before his brother could shape the answer. “It tastes like men who keep promises.”

Whitcomb’s mouth quirked. He poured a finger into a glass, sniffed, and let the first sip sit on his tongue as if he intended to eavesdrop on it. “Rough at the fence,” he said. “Clean in the yard.” Another swallow. “Better than the vinegar I sell to men who don’t know better.” He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “How many barrels?”

“Five this season,” Giuseppe said, refusing to be smaller than the truth. “Ten if the weather pretends to like us.”

“And price?”

They said a number that made Whitcomb’s eyebrows attempt to escape his face. He countered with a number that would have insulted a saint. They haggled the way men pray—beginning with audacity, working toward honesty. In the end, Whitcomb named an amount that would pay three months’ flour and two spools of wire; the Sielis agreed because sometimes victory is knowing when not to be proud.

“Put it on paper,” Whitcomb said, already half-turned to the back room where a ledger lived and judged.

A clerk appeared—a boy with a mustache he had grown by force of will and wishful thinking. He dipped his pen and waited in the charged silence of men who know ink can make a life stand still.

“Name of seller?” the clerk asked.

“Sieli,” Giuseppe said. “Giuseppe and Antonio.”

The pen scratched: Shelly.

Giuseppe watched the looped h, the careless y, the way a single letter could move a family an inch to the left on the map of the world. He did not correct it. He imagined his father’s eyebrows and forgave himself anyway.

“Quantity, delivery, price,” the clerk recited. “Terms: Mr. Whitcomb to pay upon receipt and tasting.”

Antonio smiled. “We are not afraid of tasting.”

“Sign,” Whitcomb said.

Giuseppe took the pen—the heft of it a surprise to hands that had recently belonged to a hoe—and wrote G. Sieli in a careful script that made the clerk’s mustache feel disrespected. Antonio made an A. that looked like a man standing with his legs set in stubborn earth.

Whitcomb signed with a flourish fit for a governor, tore the page with a neat rip, and handed over a copy. “Paper makes us respectable,” he said. “Sometimes even honest.”

They stepped back out into the sun with the contract crackling between them. It was just ink on pulp, but when the wind moved it, the sound made their hearts sit up and listen.

“Beppe,” Antonio said, voice low, as if they might scare it, “we belong enough to be written down.”

“Today,” Giuseppe said. “Tomorrow, we belong again.”

 Locusts, and the Hunger That Walks

Spring made the vines reckless. Green shoots ran like children. The trellises went taut with purpose. Father Bianchi, riding down the lane with his cassock hitched to keep the dust from making a sermon of itself, declared the slope “a psalm in chlorophyll.”

Then the sky changed its mind.

The morning arrived in a wind that did not smell right. The mule snorted and turned circles in his pen, making the dust preach. Li Ming came up from the lower rows with his hat in his hands, the hat trembling like anything held too tightly.

“Listen,” he said.

They heard it: a far-off chitter, a thousand tiny decisions, a sound like wind through wheat if wheat had teeth. The first locust landed on Giuseppe’s forearm—a small, amber thing with hunter’s eyes. It was joined by another. And then the air was a body, and the body was hunger.

They came in waves. They clothed the vines and then undressed them. Leaves vanished. Tender stems turned to lace. When a cloud passed in front of the sun, it was not a cloud.

“Sheets!” Antonio shouted. “Burlap!”

They ran the rows with ladders and canvas, throwing covers the way a man throws himself over a friend in a fight he cannot win. Tomás and Lucía arrived at a dead run, their daughter’s ribbon torn, face set like a rider. Seamus pounded in behind them, hat gone, hair a flag.

“Smoke,” he yelled. “They hate smoke!” and then coughed through his own advice as they lit green wood and damp straw and sent up a poor man’s miracle.

For hours, they beat vines with sticks to shake off the bodies. They scooped locusts into tubs and flung them down into the ditch where the water carried them away with a sound the brothers would hear in their sleep all summer: the rasp of eating.

By afternoon, the swarm thinned as if called to business elsewhere. The air remembered how to be air. The rows stood exposed—ragged, raked, half-naked and defiant. Lucía sat down where she was and cried without moving her hands from her lap.

Giuseppe knelt and put his forehead against a trellis post. “You did not deserve that,” he told the vines, as if vines could be persuaded.

Li Ming, who had sat quietly through a different famine in a different country, stood and dusted off his knees. “We cook them,” he said. Everyone looked up. He raised his brows. “Not revenge,” he added softly. “Resource.”

That night, they fried the locusts with garlic and wild onions in cast iron until the kitchen smelled like grief made edible. They ate, and called the dish little shrimps to help the children laugh.

In the morning, the rows were quieter. Some shoots had survived, green notes reasserting a melody. “We will prune harder,” Antonio said. “We will ask less and get more.”

“You sound like a preacher,” Seamus said.

“Then say amen and lift that end of the ladder,” Antonio replied.

 Dry Thunder

The rain forgot its part in the script. The river pulled its hem up from the bank and walked away backward. The sky learned to glare.

They saved water like misers save secrets. Barrels under eaves, barrels in shade, barrels inside the barn where the air was cooler and the dark made arithmetic slower. A boy from Crowe’s place rode by with a smirk and a shout—“Dry yet, papists?”—and kept going because even stupidity knows when it is outnumbered.

The vines changed their theology. Leaves turned inward, conserving faith. Grapes, small as promises, hung on and asked the sun to move along.

At the chapel, they lit candles and then snuffed them quickly because the heat they made seemed cruel. Father Bianchi’s sermon shortened into a single sentence: “Lord, remember us when you remember the river.” He cut it from his tongue like bread and handed it to each pew.

On a Wednesday when the horizon looked like hammered brass, the first crack split the sky—dry thunder, lightning that wrote its punctuation on dust. Smoke rose somewhere to the west, snaking thinly, indecisive. Men saddled horses, grabbed shovels, and rode toward the question.

“Go,” Giuseppe told Antonio, passing him the canteen. “I’ll keep the rows from despairing.”

By evening, the smoke had decided to live. The fire licked at scrub until the wind lost interest and lay down like a sulking dog. The neighbors came back with faces ash-streaked and eyes that had a newer understanding of thirst.

They rationed. They mulched. They sang to the plants like fools and fathers. They made it to the first hint of cool—the promise of September—by inventing new ways to be stubborn.

When the vineyard finally exhaled at dusk and the leaves clicked together like rosary beads, the brothers did not speak. Some victories you celebrate by lying on your back in the dirt and letting the stars count you.

 Preacher in the Square

“Souls!” Ezekiel Crowe shouted from a crate in the square on market day, his beard orderly, his eyes already flushed with triumph. “Beware the Romish plot! Behold the beads and idols! The Pope himself—” here he pointed as if Rome might be hiding behind the feed store—“has his eye on you!”

The crowd was the mix Fresno always served up: ranchers with dust stripes at the bend of their elbows, women with baskets that did the work of two men each, children balanced between boredom and delight. There were the merely curious, the already-angry, and the small faction that attends such speeches to feel superior to the idea of attending such speeches.

Giuseppe tugged the mule toward the general store with a wheel hub to repair and three bolts to buy. Antonio carried a sack of grapes they would trade for nails. Seamus ambled a step behind, prepared to be entertained.

Crowe’s finger found them like a divining rod finds water. “There,” he cried, “are the servants of Babylon! The men who parade their saints like idols and bow to Rome!”

Antonio halted. “We do not bow to Rome,” he said, voice level, just loud enough. “We bow to God. The bishop corrects us. We correct him under our breath. It works.”

Laughter, immediate and grateful. Crowe reddened.

“Blasphemers,” he tried again. “You worship a woman!”

“Which one?” Seamus called, wickedly earnest. “My mother could use the attention.”

More laughter. The crowd leaned toward the possibility of delight.

Crowe’s mouth thinned. “You drink the blood of—”

“We drink wine,” Giuseppe said gently, moving closer, tugging the mule along so the animal’s patient eye could make its own argument. “Sometimes good wine. Sometimes not. We do this in a church because we believe God is there even if the woodpeckers and the gossipers are too.”

A woman near the front wiped her hands on her apron and pushed her chin at Crowe. “You said last week the river ran low because of the Catholics,” she said. “It rained on the Protestants the same day it rained on us.”

Crowe tried to find his thunder and came up with a cough. “The Papists—”

“—are buying bolts,” Giuseppe said mildly, lifting his parcel. “And paying taxes. And mending a wheel so Mr. Whitcomb’s barrels don’t spill good sense all over the road.” He turned to the proprietor who had joined the listening, his bulldog jaw set to testy. “Mr. Whitcomb, would you like your barrels delivered by idolaters or by men who bring what they promised when they promised it?”

“By men who don’t talk while they work,” Whitcomb said, to a ripple of approval, and turned away, but not before grinning at the brothers as if to say well played.

Crowe abandoned doctrine and thrust at identity. “You don’t belong,” he said to the air, because sometimes even bigotry feels safer as an abstract.

Giuseppe nodded. “We agree,” he said. “Belonging is not a thing you are handed. It is a field you plant. We’re working it. You’re welcome to help.”

The square breathed out. A boy in a straw hat started clapping, because boys know when the wind has changed. Others followed—awkward, then earnest. Crowe stared, bewildered by the sound of his authority forgetting its lines.

Antonio tipped his hat. Seamus bowed low and ruined the bow with a wink. They left the crate to its silence and the preacher to his thoughts.

At the end of the block, under the eaves of the mercantile, Father Bianchi leaned against the wall, the corner of his mouth trying not to smile. “I have homilies,” he said as they passed, “but you have crowds.”

“Your job is harder,” Giuseppe answered. “You must make sinners into saints. We only have to make neighbors into neighbors.”

 Harvest: The Line in the Dust

The first cool nights finally came, and with them the color that means sugar. Grapes swelled to the size of fingernails and then to the size of little promises kept. They tasted berries every morning—Rosa serious with her notebook, Caterina with her mouth purple and unconvinced by arithmetic.

“Two more days,” Antonio said, rolling a berry on his tongue, listening for the music under the sweetness.

“Tomorrow,” Tomás countered, spitting a seed with authority.

“Tonight,” Lucía said, “because I dreamed the rows were singing, and you do not make a song wait.”

They began at dawn. Knives flashed. Baskets thumped. The vineyard breathed in a rhythm you could dance to. Word had gone out among the valley’s invisible postmen: there was work at Sieli’s. Pickers came—Mexican families with hands that understood delicacy, an Irish couple, two Yokuts boys, a Chinese uncle who spoke softly to the vines as he cut.

The line of full baskets moved like a procession. At the scales, Antonio weighed and called numbers with the ceremony of Mass. Rosa wrote them, tongue between her teeth as if every mark must be carved onto stone.

Around midday, a rider kicked up dust along the road and swung down with more flourish than necessary. It was not Crowe, but a cousin in spirit—a foreman from a ranch past the creek, hat tilted, mouth curled. Three men followed, boots important.

“Stop,” the foreman said, as if he had discovered he could order clouds to obey. “That one.” He pointed at the Chinese uncle. “He belongs to Mr. Pike today. He signed on our sheet.”

Li Ming looked up, knife still, expression polite and sharp enough to cut paper. “No,” he said. “I pick here. Today.” His English was careful. His spine was a line drawn with a ruler.

The foreman stepped closer, close enough to smell harvest sweat and garlic. “You come now,” he said, poking a finger at Li Ming’s chest, a small violence meant to indicate larger ones.

Antonio moved without thinking, setting himself between finger and friend. “You can speak to me,” he said.

“I am speaking to you,” the foreman said, although he was still looking around Antonio as if the taller thing were not precisely the point.

Giuseppe came up from the other side, wiping his hands on a towel. “If there is a paper,” he said, “show it.”

The foreman produced a sheet with names and marks that might have been made by the men in question or by anyone in a hurry. He jabbed at a line with ink that had been coaxed into a Chinese character by a man who did not know what he was doing.

“This is not his name,” Li Ming said, not offended, simply amused. “It says river but you forgot the left-hand piece, so now it says grave. Not a good sign.”

Tomás chuckled. The foreman reddened.

“Mr. Pike pays more,” one of the boot men added, as if the argument needed a coin to stand on. “Your people don’t know better than to leave for more.”

“My people,” Giuseppe said carefully, “know that agreements made with the mouth are still agreements. We told these hands what the day would pay. They told us they would pick. We will both keep our promises.”

“Your people,” the foreman mimicked. “That’s the trouble, papist. You think anyone with a knife in a row is yours.”

“No,” Giuseppe said. “I think anyone with a knife in my row at my invitation is under my protection.”

The foreman took another step. The three boot men spread a little, a formation without thinking. The pickers set down knives without being told and stood with their hands empty, which is sometimes the best way to show a man how dangerous he is being.

“Careful,” Seamus said softly from nowhere and everywhere, which is where Irishmen excel at being when tempers are warm.

“Mr. Pike will not like this,” the foreman warned.

“Then Mr. Pike can come himself,” Antonio said, and then—because he had learned a little of diplomacy since the mountains—he added, “We will pour him a glass and talk like men with mouths instead of sticks.”

The foreman glanced at the faces—Mexican, Chinese, Irish, Yokuts, Italian. He tried to do the sum of them and did not like the answer.

“You’ll be sorry,” he said, but it came out thin, like a rope left in the rain.

“We are already farmers,” Giuseppe said. “We are acquainted with sorrow. Today we prefer justice.”

The foreman spat in the dust and swung up. His men mounted with the bravado of boys who would need a story for supper. They left, and the dust lay down behind them.

For a moment, the vineyard listened to itself breathe. Then Antonio clapped his hands. “Weighing!” he shouted. “Counting! Eating! There is stew and bread! Mr. Pike can come hungry or friendly, but we will not wait.”

They ate in the shade of the sycamores, bowls balanced on knees, the stew bright with tomatoes that had understood their assignment. The children carried bread like acolytes. Lucía scolded anyone whose bowl showed bottom too soon. Li Ming, expression unreadable, bowed to Giuseppe once—small, solemn, sufficient.

Later, Rosa gripped her father’s sleeve. “When you said my people,” she asked, “did you mean… us, only?”

“I meant anyone who trusts us,” Giuseppe said. “Blood and water and work and bread can make a people. So can a piece of paper,” he added, patting his pocket with Whitcomb’s contract folded and worn. “But the field is the oldest paper. We signed our names here with sweat.”

That evening, as the press sang and the yeast began its patient ferocity, a rider appeared at the gate, hat in hand. It was not Mr. Pike. It was his wife, Mrs. Pike, small and composed, with a face that had learned how to pass judgment without breaking.

“I came,” she said to Giuseppe at the fence, “because my husband has no sense for keeping friends. He will bluster. He will send letters with words like trespass and theft. Accept my apology now, and my request: next season, if your days are full, send the men you cannot use to me first. I pay proper.” She met his eyes. “And I do not poke chests.”

Giuseppe inclined his head. “We will remember.”

She turned her horse, paused, and glanced back at the rows glowing in their own dusk. “Pretty,” she said. “Even to a Baptist.”

“Even to a papist,” Giuseppe said, and she laughed once, startled and relieved to find the joke large enough for both.

 The Night Work

Harvest makes its own clock. They worked by lantern, moths knocking themselves senseless against the glass. The press took barrels with a steady thirst. The air filled with an argument of sweetness and muscle.

At midnight, Father Bianchi arrived as if pulled by scent. He rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands in a basin with solemnity. “The sacrament begins in the field,” he said, taking a turn at the press. “All I do is bless the part that remembers.”

“Bless this,” Antonio said, handing him a cup. The priest drank, coughed, and gave thanks for honesty.

Seamus tuned the piano to almost-in-tune and played a hymn like a reel and a reel like a hymn. The Yokuts boys taught Rosa to whistle with a blade of grass. Caterina fell asleep on a sack of stems and dreamed she was a queen of purple geese.

The stars pressed close, not with pity, but with interest. The vineyard, which had suffered locust and drought and the mathematics of men with ledgers, decided to be generous.

When dawn made the rows silver and the lantern flames thin, they leaned on barrels and felt the ache that is the receipt for a day well spent. Giuseppe’s hands looked older; Antonio’s grin looked younger. Li Ming, who never smiled for ceremony, smiled then.

“Good,” he said simply.

 The Quiet After

Two days later, under a sky that had decided to be blue without boasting, they delivered the first five barrels to Whitcomb. He tapped a spigot, drew a measure, and set it in the light with the reverence of a man not usually given to reverence.

“Steadier,” he said. “Cleaner.” He drank. “Worth paying for.” Coins clinked into a bag. He handed it to Giuseppe. “Paper, and now money. Next we’ll make you citizens.”

“We’ll settle for neighbors,” Giuseppe said.

Whitcomb squinted toward the square. Ezekiel Crowe’s crate sat unattended, a lonely pulpit without a voice. “Man gets tired of hearing himself,” Whitcomb said. “Or of not being heard.”

He leaned in, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret he had grown himself: “You know what sells more beer than hate?”

“Thirst,” Antonio guessed.

“Music,” Whitcomb said, jerking his chin toward the corner where Seamus, pressed into service and paid in beer, was making the wounded piano remember a tune. “Bring him with your barrels. Men who sing drink longer and fight less.”

On the way home, they cut across the ditch and walked the long between-rows. The vines had taken off their fever and put on composure. The mule, for once, did not plot treachery. The girls ran ahead, playing at being harvest foremen, yelling Weigh! Weigh! with the importance small people grant themselves properly.

Giuseppe slowed at the kitchen door and put his hand on the frame—a habit that had become a way to count blessings without making anyone uncomfortable.

“You were right,” Antonio said, looking out over what they had made and what had allowed itself to be made. “We gave the mountain a new name.”

Giuseppe watched Rosa drop into the grass to dig up a stone she had decided might be a treasure; watched Caterina try to pick up the mule’s hoof and hiss when he declined the honor; watched Li Ming teaching Tomás’s daughter how to fold paper into a bird that might carry a wish.

“We gave ourselves one,” he said.

He lifted the contract from his pocket. The paper was soft now, the creases deep, the misspelling permanent. He could feel the path from Sieli to Shelly under his thumb like a scar that had learned to be a story and not an injury.

“Belonging,” he murmured, almost to himself, “is a field you plant.”

Antonio bumped his shoulder. “And a barrel you roll,” he said. “And a man you stand in front of when someone pokes him.”

Giuseppe smiled. “And a name you answer to,” he added. “Even when they say it wrong.”

They went inside to count coins, to hand Lucía a jar of sugar, to give Father Bianchi two chickens against the unending debt of gratitude. Outside, the vines rested, and in their resting they rehearsed the spring.

The soil remembered every footstep. The sky, fickle and fair by turns, held its breath and let it out again. The field kept the brothers’ signatures in lines of root and rhythm.

They belonged—not safely, not irrevocably, not in a way that could not be argued—but enough. Enough to plant again. Enough to defend someone smaller than themselves. Enough to write their names in wine.

 Barrels to Sacramento

Epigraph: Sacramento Union (July 18, 1865) — “LINCOLN BURIED IN SPRINGFIELD, FLAGS AT HALF-MAST IN CALIFORNIA”

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The River Calls

By the mid-1860s, word of the Sieli wine had spread beyond Fresno’s taverns. Whitcomb’s House in town was no longer enough; now the proprietor pressed them to ship barrels north.

“Sacramento thirsts,” he insisted. “And thirsty men pay double.”

The brothers hesitated. To send wine upriver meant leaving their land, their families, their rows of vines vulnerable. But Giuseppe saw something else: permanence. If their barrels were poured in the capital, their name—however misspelled—might finally stick.

So one dawn, they loaded five barrels onto a mule-drawn cart. Antonio cinched the ropes tight, muttering, “If these roll into a ditch, we may as well roll in after them.”

Giuseppe touched the paper contract folded in his breast pocket. “We are not carrying barrels,” he said. “We are carrying our name.”

The War and Its Echo

That night, before their first journey north, the kitchen fire burned low but the talk rose high. Seamus unfolded a copy of the Sacramento Union, its edges smudged with grape stains. The headlines spoke of battles with names that already felt like scars: Gettysburg, Antietam, Chattanooga.

“They fight over slavery,” Rosa whispered, face pale in the lamplight.

“They fight over what America will be,” Giuseppe corrected. “A house cannot stand divided, Lincoln says. He is right.”

Antonio slammed his fist softly against the table. “We came here to be free men. How could we do less than stand with the Union? If this land is to mean anything, it cannot mean chains for one man and liberty for another.”

Seamus shook his head, firelight catching in his hair. “There are those in California who cheer for the Confederacy. They talk of states’ rights. They talk of keeping the Negro in his place.”

“And we know that talk,” Giuseppe said quietly. “We have heard it in other words. Dago. Wop. Papist. Go back. It is always the same song—sung by men who fear to share the table.”

Li Ming looked up from the corner, his English careful. “If Union falls, no immigrant safe.”Giuseppe nodded gravely. “Then we pray the Union does not fall.”

Riots in New York

Weeks later, Seamus came running up the vineyard lane, a torn paper in his hand and his face flushed with anger. He slapped it down on the table: Draft Riots in New York! Negroes Lynched! City in Flames!

“They’ve gone mad back east,” he said bitterly. “Irishmen—my own countrymen—clubbin’ the poor, burnin’ churches, stringin’ up colored folk in the streets. All because the rich can buy their sons out o’ the draft, while the poor are sent to die.”

Antonio’s face darkened. “Three hundred dollars,” he muttered. “More money than we have ever seen in one place. So the rich are spared, and the poor tear each other apart instead of their masters.”

Rosa clutched the edge of the table. “I read they burned an orphanage. A home for colored children. How could anyone—” Her voice broke.

Lucía crossed herself, tears in her eyes. “The devil tempts men to believe misery can be healed by handing it to another. Fools listen.”

Seamus looked into the fire. “God help us. Justice cannot grow from ashes.”

Giuseppe stared at the rows outside, black against the starlit night. “If those rioters had stood in a vineyard row for a day, side by side with Negro, Irish, or Chinese, they’d have learned the truth—that every man’s sweat is the same.”

For a long while, no one spoke. The fire snapped. The paper lay heavy on the table, its ink still smudging the fingers that dared to touch it.

The Martyr President

In April of 1865, word reached Fresno with the dawn mail: President Abraham Lincoln was dead, shot in a theater.

Father Bianchi tolled the chapel bell until his arms ached. Black cloth was hung from the little adobe chapel’s door. Men stood outside bare-headed; women wept with aprons pressed to their faces.

At the vineyard, Antonio lowered the flag they had bought with Whitcomb’s help and tied a strip of mourning cloth to its staff. The rows themselves seemed hushed, as though vines could grieve.

“He gave his life for a new birth of freedom,” Giuseppe murmured, clutching the rosary in his pocket.

Seamus stared at the dust under his boots. “I’ve seen many men die. But never one whose death will be remembered in a hundred years.”

Rosa clutched her father’s arm. “What now?”

Giuseppe bent low so his daughter could hear him clearly. “Now we plant. That is how we answer death. We plant, and we stay.”

When the mourning cloth was finally taken down, life pressed forward. The brothers rolled their barrels toward Sacramento’s wharf, where merchants and tavern-keepers argued in loud voices about prices and politics alike.

The Sacramento River glistened bronze in the late afternoon. At the landing, the paddle steamer Senator belched smoke and noise, loading crates of cotton, sacks of wheat, and casks of brandy bound for the state capital.

A boy hawked newspapers: “Reconstruction marches on! Freedmen’s Bureau fights for rights!” Passengers bought copies, brows furrowed, arguments spilling before the ship even left the dock.

Giuseppe and Antonio rolled their barrels aboard, careful as fathers carrying infants. Seamus, roped in for his fiddle and his fists, carried the last. “If we drown,” he grinned, “at least we’ll float in good company.”

The deck was a babel of languages: German hop farmers, Mexican vaqueros, a pair of Chinese laborers still smelling of railroad dust. And above them all, the river agent strutted—Mr. Bartlett, a man whose waistcoat bulged as if lined with coins and whose eyes darted like a pickpocket’s.

---

Barrels and Belonging

At Sacramento’s wharf, merchants and tavern keepers gathered to inspect cargo. A saloon owner, red-faced and impatient, offered cash on the spot. “I’ll pay double Whitcomb’s price. Triple if you sell to me now.”

But Giuseppe shook his head. “A man keeps his word, or he has no name.”

Whitcomb himself arrived days later to taste the barrels. He tapped a spigot, drew a measure, and set it in the light with the reverence of a man not usually given to reverence.

“Steadier,” he said. “Cleaner.” He drank. “Worth paying for.” Coins clinked into a bag. He handed it to Giuseppe. “Paper, and now money. Next we’ll make you citizens.”

“We’ll settle for neighbors,” Giuseppe replied.

Whitcomb squinted toward the square. Ezekiel Crowe’s crate sat unattended, a lonely pulpit without a voice. “Man gets tired of hearing himself,” Whitcomb muttered. “Or of not being heard.”

He leaned closer, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret he had grown himself. “You know what sells more beer than hate?”

“Thirst,” Antonio guessed.

“Music,” Whitcomb said, jerking his chin toward the corner where Seamus, pressed into service and paid in beer, was making the wounded piano remember a tune. “Bring him with your barrels. Men who sing drink longer and fight less.”

---

The Long Between-Rows

On the way home, they cut across the ditch and walked the long between-rows. The vines had taken off their fever and put on composure. The mule, for once, did not plot treachery. The girls ran ahead, playing at being harvest foremen, yelling Weigh! Weigh! with the importance small people grant themselves properly.

Giuseppe slowed at the kitchen door and put his hand on the frame—a habit that had become a way to count blessings without making anyone uncomfortable.

“You were right,” Antonio said, looking out over what they had made and what had allowed itself to be made. “We gave the mountain a new name.”

Giuseppe watched Rosa drop into the grass to dig up a stone she had decided might be a treasure; watched Caterina try to pick up the mule’s hoof and hiss when he declined the honor; watched Li Ming teaching Tomás’s daughter how to fold paper into a bird that might carry a wish.

“We gave ourselves one,” he said.

He lifted the contract from his pocket. The paper was soft now, the creases deep, the misspelling permanent. He could feel the path from Sieli to Shelly under his thumb like a scar that had learned to be a story and not an injury.

“Belonging,” he murmured, almost to himself, “is a field you plant.”

Antonio bumped his shoulder. “And a barrel you roll,” he said. “And a man you stand in front of when someone pokes him.”

Giuseppe smiled. “And a name you answer to,” he added. “Even when they say it wrong.”

They went inside to count coins, to hand Lucía a jar of sugar, to give Father Bianchi two chickens against the unending debt of gratitude. Outside, the vines rested, and in their resting they rehearsed the spring.

The soil remembered every footstep. The sky, fickle and fair by turns, held its breath and let it out again. The field kept the brothers’ signatures in lines of root and rhythm.

They belonged—not safely, not irrevocably, not in a way that could not be argued—but enough. Enough to plant again. Enough to defend someone smaller than themselves. Enough to write their names in wine.

---

Return Downriver

On the return trip, the brothers stood at the rail, watching Sacramento shrink. Antonio broke the silence. “We could have tripled our profit.”

Giuseppe rested a hand on his shoulder. “Profit passes. A name endures. When our children drink from these vines, I want them to say: the Sieli name is worth more than gold.”

From the deck below, Seamus’s fiddle struck up Home, Sweet Home. Passengers hummed along, some with tears in their eyes.

The river rolled south, carrying barrels now empty, but a reputation just beginning to fill.

 Panic and Drought

Epigraph: Sacramento Union (Oct. 10, 1873) — “WALL STREET COLLAPSES — BANKS FAIL, RAILROAD STOCKS WORTHLESS”

---

Whispers of Panic

By the early 1870s, the Sieli name had taken root in Fresno taverns and Sacramento saloons. Their barrels traveled upriver with regularity, and Whitcomb’s contracts grew fatter. The vineyard seemed steady, almost invincible.

Then came the whispers. A merchant at the Fresno depot muttered about Wall Street banks folding. A German farmer spoke of credit drying up. Seamus brought back a crumpled Sacramento Union:

FINANCIERS RUINED — THE PANIC OF ’73 SPREADS WESTWARD

Giuseppe studied the paper, lips pressed tight. “A storm in New York cannot drown a vineyard in Fresno.”

Antonio was less certain. “When bankers fall, they take honest men down with them.”

Within weeks, buyers hesitated to pay in coin. Taverns asked for credit. Even Whitcomb delayed his remittances, mumbling of hard times.

---

The Drought

As if panic were not enough, the sky turned cruel. The winter rains came thin, trickling instead of flooding. By spring, the earth cracked like old parchment. The vines bent under the heat, leaves curling, grapes shriveling before their time.

Rosa carried buckets from the well until her arms ached. Caterina wept when the mule collapsed, too weak for hauling. Antonio cursed the heavens. “God sends us soil and then robs us of water.”

Father Bianchi rode down the lane, cassock dusty, eyes kind but tired. “The whole valley prays. Even Protestants are begging saints they once mocked.”

Giuseppe touched the dry earth, then his rosary. “Saints cannot open clouds. But perhaps canals can.”

---

A Desperate Gamble

Talk spread of a new irrigation ditch—a bold scheme proposed by a syndicate of ranchers. For a subscription fee, water would be diverted from the San Joaquin River, channeled to desperate fields.

The price was staggering. To invest meant emptying nearly all the vineyard’s savings. Antonio railed, “A gamble on men with papers and promises? They could vanish with our coin!”

Giuseppe answered quietly, “If we do nothing, the vines will vanish first.”

That night at the kitchen table, by lamplight, the brothers argued. Rosa listened, face pale. “Papa,” she whispered, “can vines live without water?”

Giuseppe met her eyes. “No, figlia mia. Neither vines nor people.”

The next morning, he and Antonio carried their pouch of savings to the syndicate office, laid the coins down, and signed their names with trembling hands.

---

Neighbors Divide

Not all agreed. Crowe thundered in the square: “Irrigation is folly! God alone waters the fields!” Others muttered that Catholics had tricked honest Protestants into financing papist canals.

Seamus, leaning on his fiddle case, snorted. “Better papist water than Protestant dust.”

Even Whitcomb, usually steady, scoffed. “You Italians throw coin into ditches like boys into ponds.”

Antonio bristled, but Giuseppe held him back. “Time will decide who is fool.”

---

Waiting for Rain

Summer deepened. The ditch cut through the valley like a scar. Men sweated with shovels, mules strained at wagons, and still no water flowed.

At the vineyard, the Sielis rationed every drop. Rosa and Caterina sang hymns while hauling buckets, their voices trembling against the heat. Li Ming suggested shading rows with brush, a trick from distant provinces. “Even shadows,” he said, “are water of a kind.”

One evening, the family knelt at the chapel. Father Bianchi’s sermon was simple: “Patience is prayer with dirt under its nails.”

---

The Flow

Then, one September morning, a cry rose along the ditch. Water shimmered at the far end, crawling forward like salvation. Children ran beside it, laughing, muddying their feet. Men fell to their knees, scooping handfuls to their mouths.

At the vineyard, Giuseppe and Antonio stood as the first trickle reached their rows. The soil darkened, drinking greedily. Leaves seemed to lift as if in gratitude.

Antonio exhaled a long breath. “We bet everything.”

Giuseppe nodded. “And the vines have repaid us.”

---

The Harvest of ’73

That autumn’s harvest was lean, grapes small, but every berry felt like a victory. The wine pressed from them was rough, almost bitter—but it existed, and that was triumph enough.

At Whitcomb’s, a merchant sniffed. “Thin vintage.”

Giuseppe answered firmly. “Thin years make honest wine.”

Whitcomb considered, then smiled. “Honest sells.”

---

The Lesson

At the kitchen table, Giuseppe poured the family a measure of the new wine. “Remember this taste,” he said. “It carries the dust of drought and the coin of our last gamble. One day, when rains are kind, you will drink sweeter vintages. But this—this will teach you what it means to endure.”

Antonio lifted his glass. “To canals, to fools who risk everything, and to vines that forgive us.”

The family drank. Outside, the ditch water murmured through the fields, a steady hymn of survival.

The Railroad Age

Epigraph: Sacramento Daily Record (May 11, 1869) — “GOLDEN SPIKE DRIVEN AT PROMONTORY: EAST MEETS WEST”

---

Rails Through the Valley

By the late 1870s, the vineyard’s rows stretched longer, steadier, greener than ever before. The irrigation ditch had saved them during the drought, and their gamble in 1873 was now paying dividends.

But with the vines came change. The shrill whistle of locomotives echoed across the valley, shattering the quiet of fields. Rails carved straight lines through oaks and vineyards alike, iron cleaving soil that had known only plows.

One afternoon, Rosa came running from the depot, skirts gathered in her fists, hair tangled by the hot wind. “Papa! The railroad men have posted a notice. They want land for a station—here!” She held out the broadsheet, smudged with fresh ink.

Giuseppe read aloud, voice heavy: “By order of the Central Pacific, rights-of-way will be secured for the progress of commerce. Compensation to be determined by company agents.”

Antonio cursed. “They mean to steal. Railroads take as Rome once took—roads first, coin later.”

---

At the Depot

The brothers traveled to Sacramento’s new depot to meet with the agent, Mr. Harlan, a pale man with spectacles and a manner like polished iron. The depot bustled—merchants, farmers, Chinese laborers carrying crates, even a group of Italian newcomers squinting at signs.

Harlan adjusted his spectacles. “Gentlemen, progress does not wait for sentiment. A station here means prosperity. Your vineyard will double in value.”

Antonio crossed his arms. “And if we refuse?”

Harlan’s smile was thin. “The company has other means. Better you cooperate. Sell us the frontage at our price.”

Giuseppe kept his tone calm. “Our vines are not for sale. They are our children.”

Harlan sighed, tapping his ledger. “Children grow best with rails to carry their fruit. Think on it.”

---

Whitcomb’s Warning

That evening at Whitcomb’s tavern, Seamus fiddled while men drank and argued about the railroad. Whitcomb leaned over the counter, voice low. “You can’t fight them, boys. The Southern Pacific is king now. They own the legislature as surely as they own these tracks.”

Antonio scowled. “A king we never crowned.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Whitcomb replied. “You resist, you’ll find your barrels delayed, your contracts ‘lost’ in paperwork. I’ve seen it before.”

Giuseppe rubbed his temples. “So we bend or we starve?”

Whitcomb shrugged. “Or you outwit them. Progress makes greedy men sloppy.”

---

Chinese Neighbors

Meanwhile, tension in town was rising. Posters plastered walls: WORKINGMEN’S PARTY MEETING TONIGHT — THE CHINESE MUST GO! Denis Kearney’s fiery speeches echoed even in Fresno.

At the vineyard, Li Ming and his nephews worked quietly among the rows, their hands deft, their voices soft. Rosa carried them bread and olives, ignoring the mutters from passing ranchers.

One afternoon, Antonio caught sight of Crowe—still loud, still bitter—railing to a small crowd outside the mercantile. “They steal your bread! They steal your wages! And papists like the Sielis shelter them!”

Antonio strode forward, face hot. “Better men who work with hands and keep their word than men who preach hate for coin!”

Crowe sneered. “Spoken like a foreigner.”

“And proud of it,” Antonio snapped.

The crowd shifted uneasily. Some muttered agreement, others jeered. But when Seamus struck up his fiddle nearby, playing The Battle Cry of Freedom, the crowd dispersed, half humming, half ashamed.

---

The Confrontation

Weeks later, Harlan returned with company men and surveyor stakes. “The station will be here,” he declared, driving a post into Sieli soil.

Giuseppe stepped forward, calm but resolute. “Not through our vines. This land feeds our families.”

Harlan’s men shifted, hands on stakes as if they were weapons. Antonio bristled, fists ready. But Giuseppe raised his hand.

“Listen,” he said. “We will not sell at your price. But if the station must be built, then let it be at the edge, where our vineyard is least. Pay us fair coin, and we will bring barrels to your trains. Refuse, and we will send our wine by river, where the current is honest.”

Harlan hesitated. His men waited. Finally, he nodded. “A compromise, then. But remember—progress waits for no one.”

---

A Barrel for the Future

That harvest, the Sielis rolled their barrels not just to Sacramento but onto the new railcars. The whistle shrieked, the wheels clattered, and their wine rode north faster than ever before.

As they watched the train pull away, Caterina clutched Giuseppe’s hand. “Papa, will the railroad swallow everything?”

Giuseppe looked at the dark horizon where the rails vanished. “It will swallow much. But not our roots. A vine cannot be uprooted by iron—it clings deeper.”

Antonio, standing nearby, muttered, “Unless drought comes again.”

Giuseppe smiled faintly. “Then we plant once more. Always once more.”

---

Epilogue of the Rails

That night, Rosa sat at the kitchen table, scribbling with ink. “What are you writing?” Antonio asked.

“A letter,” she said. “To cousins in Italy. To tell them that the world here is bigger than gold—that even iron rails cannot bury a family’s name.”

Giuseppe placed a hand on her shoulder. “Good. Let them know. Let them come. California is not gentle, but it can be ours if we make it so.”

Outside, the whistle of the midnight train echoed. The vineyard rustled in the dark, roots firm in soil, even as the world above it changed.

Opening Day

The morning the station opened, Fresno looked like a town pretending to be a city. Banners stretched across the depot, American flags fluttered from rough poles, and a brass band from Sacramento tuned up on the platform. The smell of dust, sweat, and hot iron filled the air.

Rosa and Caterina craned their necks as the train pulled in, steam hissing, whistle shrieking. Children squealed, clutching their ears. Antonio muttered, “Sounds like a demon trying to sing.”

Giuseppe only smiled faintly. “It is the sound of change, brother. Not all songs are sweet.”

Merchants crowded the platform, their faces shining with ambition. Politicians in starched collars shook hands. A preacher stood near the steps, Bible raised, declaring the railroad “a new covenant for California.”

---

The Speech

Mr. Harlan, spectacles gleaming, climbed onto a crate. “Friends, today the Southern Pacific joins this valley to the world! No longer will Fresno be a forgotten corner. Our crops, our goods, our very names will travel as swift as steam!”

A cheer rose from the Anglos at the front. But further back, a cluster of Mexican vaqueros and Chinese laborers stood silent, arms crossed. They had laid the ties and hammered the spikes, yet no one called their names.

Antonio muttered, “The railroad remembers only the men who ride it, not the ones who built it.”

Giuseppe answered softly, “Then we must remind them.”

---

The Barrel Gift

When Harlan finished his speech, he called for wine to christen the station. A cask had been brought by a Sacramento merchant, but the spigot jammed, and the crowd laughed nervously.

Giuseppe stepped forward, Rosa and Caterina carrying a smaller barrel between them. “The Sieli vineyard offers Fresno’s first toast,” he announced. His accent was still thick, but his voice was strong.

For a moment, silence. Then Whitcomb—bulldog jaw, tavernkeeper’s pride—clapped loudly. “Pour it, Joe!”

Seamus struck his fiddle with a quick reel. The band faltered, then joined him, and laughter bubbled through the crowd. Giuseppe poured the first cups. Politicians raised them high. “To Fresno! To progress!”

---

Trouble Brews

But not all smiled. Ezekiel Crowe shoved his way to the front, his voice carrying. “Progress? With papist wine and heathen labor? This station is baptized in garlic and idol beads!”

The crowd shifted. Some laughed uneasily. Others muttered agreement. Crowe pointed toward Li Ming and his nephews, who stood quietly at the edge. “Look there! The Chinese must go! And the dagos with them!”

A knot of young men cheered. One tossed a stone that clattered at the laborers’ feet. Rosa gasped.

Antonio surged forward, fists ready, but Giuseppe caught his arm. “Not fists. Not here.”

Seamus raised his fiddle high and struck a loud chord—The Battle Cry of Freedom. The band picked it up, brass blaring. Some of the crowd began singing:

Yes, we’ll rally round the flag…

Union veterans cheered, drowning Crowe’s voice. The preacher thundered amen. Children clapped their hands. Even the angry young men wavered, torn between jeering and singing.

---

The Near Fight

Crowe, red-faced, shoved Giuseppe. “You think music will save you, papist? Your vines will rot when the company comes for them!”

Antonio lunged, but Seamus shoved his fiddle between them. “Strike me instead,” he said coolly. “But you’ll owe the crowd a tune.”

The absurdity broke the tension. Laughter scattered like birds. Crowe, sneering, slunk back into the crowd.

Giuseppe leaned close to Antonio. “Patience, brother. Roots last longer than shouts.”

---

After the Ceremony

That evening, the family walked home past the new tracks. Rosa asked softly, “Papa, why do they hate us still, when we give them wine?”

Giuseppe looked at the rails glinting in the sunset. “Because they fear there is not enough room. But the soil teaches us otherwise. One root finds water. Another finds shade. Both grow.”

Antonio grunted. “If the soil does not dry again.”

Giuseppe smiled faintly. “Then we dig canals. Or pray. Or fight. Always once more.”

Seamus, fiddling as they walked, grinned. “Or we play until even hate is forced to dance.”

The whistle of the evening train echoed across the valley. The vines rustled in answer, as if promising that though iron may cut the land, roots would always cling deeper.

_____________________________

The 1870s brought not only rails and new markets, but news from the wider West. At Whitcomb’s tavern, Seamus slapped a copy of the San Francisco Bulletin on the counter. “Modoc War,” he said grimly. “Army chasing a handful of families up north. Whole columns of soldiers can’t smoke ’em out of the lava beds.”

Antonio leaned over the print, brow furrowed. “Families,” he repeated. “Not armies. They call it war because it suits their story. But it is a people trying not to vanish.”

Giuseppe sipped his wine slowly. “Everywhere, the same. Back east they write of Sioux at Little Bighorn, of Custer cut down with all his men. And what do the papers call it? A massacre. When the soldiers kill the Lakota, they call it victory.”

“Some settlers here cheer for it,” Seamus muttered. “Say the land ain’t safe till the red man’s gone. But I’ve worked alongside Yokuts in these fields. They bled into this soil same as we do.”

Antonio nodded firmly. “We came as strangers, and still they call us dago, papist, foreigner. So we will not be the kind of men who make others strangers in their own home. Better to live side by side than to burn another’s lodge and pretend it is progress.”

Rosa, now old enough to follow such talk, asked quietly, “And if they come here, Papa? If the Army says this land is not ours?”

Giuseppe put a hand on her shoulder, his voice steady. “Then we will do as we always have. We will plant. We will stand. And we will make neighbors where others see only enemies.”

 The Years of Prejudice and Pride

Epigraph: Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), Sept. 5, 1878 — “WORKINGMEN’S PARTY RALLIES: ‘THE CHINESE MUST GO!’”

The posters went up first—cheap paper glued to every blank wall in Fresno, letters big as a shout:

WORKINGMEN’S PARTY MEETING TONIGHT
COURTHOUSE SQUARE — SPEAKER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
THE CHINESE MUST GO!

Rosa found one tacked to the post outside Whitcomb’s and read it twice, mouth set. Inside, Seamus tuned his fiddle against the tavern’s hum while Whitcomb polished a glass he didn’t trust anyone else to touch.

“Ugly season,” Whitcomb said, catching her look. “A man comes down from the city, winds folks up, rides out with his hat full of coin. Leaves the rest of us to count broken windows.”

“Does he name us?” Rosa asked.

“He don’t have to,” Whitcomb said. “Crowe does that part for free.”

---

The square was already thick with bodies by sunset—ranch hands, shopkeepers, a few boys still raw with adolescence who had learned that shouting could feel like growing. The speaker—a compact man with bright, hard eyes—mounted a crate and threw sparks.

“Who takes your bread?” he roared. “Who steals your work? The Chinese! And who hires them?” He swept his arm toward the far edge of the crowd where Li Ming and his nephews stood with a few other Chinese laborers, faces still from long practice. “Men who call themselves neighbors and are nothing of the kind!”

A murmur swelled, seeking a direction. From the rear, Ezekiel Crowe shoved forward, pointing across heads. “There! The papists who shelter them! The Sielis!”

Giuseppe, who had come because a man should not let others define him in public, stood straight. Antonio tensed at his side. Seamus, carrying his instrument like a priest carries a candle, took up position between them and the crate.

The speaker slapped the handbill in his palm. “Denis Kearney says it right: ‘The Chinese must go!’ California is for Americans!”

“And the railroad?” a farmer called. “They were American when they laid those ties, were they?”

Laughter shot through the crowd like a good rumor. The speaker’s jaw tightened.

Giuseppe raised his voice, accent thick and unashamed. “We hire hands who keep their word. Irish, Mexican, Chinese—any man who will work and eat at the same table. Our wine does not ask a passport.”

“Your wine asks a rosary,” Crowe sneered.

“Our wine asks patience,” Giuseppe said. “And pays in seasons. I will not teach my children to hate the people who pick beside them.”

A rock skittered near Li Ming’s boot, tossed by a boy whose fear had learned the shape of bravado. Antonio moved fast, planting himself between the laborers and the roughest faces. “Enough.”

The speaker sensed the moment slipping. “If your employers won’t listen to justice,” he snapped, “they’ll listen to empty pockets. Boycott their barrels! Smash their windows! Make them understand who owns this valley!”

Seamus lifted his fiddle and struck the first sure notes of “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Veterans in the crowd turned reflexively toward the sound; some put hands to hearts, some to memories. The speaker scowled. Seamus slid the tune into “Home, Sweet Home,” and Whitcomb, bless him, started the words in a voice that had soothed a hundred fights:

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam…

Something let go in the square. Men who had come to be angry found themselves humming, then singing. The speaker, seeing his sermon drowned by melody, leapt from the crate and stalked off with a handful of loyalists, promising another meeting, a louder one.

Crowe didn’t leave. He leaned in close enough for Giuseppe to smell bitterness and tobacco. “You think your little concerts can save you.”

Giuseppe’s smile was faint. “They saved you tonight.”

Crowe’s eyes flicked toward Li Ming, then to Rosa, then back to the brothers. “There will be another night.”

---

By week’s end, “another night” arrived. Someone painted crude characters on the fence by the road, a mockery of Chinese script with a skull between brushstrokes. A window in the shed shattered. The next morning, a chicken lay dead in the path with a paper around its neck: CALIFORNIA FOR AMERICANS ONLY.

Antonio slammed the note down on the kitchen table. “Let me talk to Harlan. He sits on the railroad board and the town council both. He can nose out which men throw stones when they think they’re invisible.”

“Harlan counts freight, not decency,” Rosa said.

“We speak to him anyway,” Giuseppe decided. “When a storm rises, you talk to the man who owns the tallest roof.”

They found Harlan in his depot office, spectacles glinting, pen scratching. He read the note with the same expression he reserved for ledgers that didn’t balance. “Unfortunate,” he said. “But feelings are high.”

“Feelings don’t kill chickens,” Antonio said. “Men do.”

Harlan folded the paper. “Annoy them less,” he suggested, as if offering a discount. “Hire fewer Chinese. Or hire them out of sight. Everyone is on edge—the Workingmen have real grievances.”

Rosa’s voice sharpened. “So their grievance is our workers’ faces?”

Harlan’s tone cooled. “My grievance is freight that fails to ship because windows are broken and barrels are delayed. Sign this.” He slid a paper across: a “civic resolution” condemning importation of Chinese labor. “A gesture,” he said. “Buy yourself peace.”

Giuseppe didn’t touch it. “We made a choice when we came to this country,” he said. “To be worthy of belonging. Not to purchase it with our neighbors’ dignity.”

Harlan’s mouth thinned. “The company can make life easy or difficult.”

Giuseppe rose. “The soil does not take orders from the company.”

They left with nothing but the paper’s bad taste in their mouths.

---

At Mass the next Sunday, Father Bianchi looked out over a congregation that included men who shouted on weeknights and knelt on Sundays. He set aside the homily he had written and spoke from the old place in his chest where justice and weariness meet.

“You will not like my words,” he began. “I do not like them either. But I will not leave them unsaid. I have heard ‘The Chinese must go.’ I have heard ‘Papists, go back where you came from.’ And I remember the Gospel says, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ It does not add ‘unless you have a job I want’ or ‘unless you pray differently.’”

A rustle. Crowe’s silhouette at the back, arms folded. The priest’s voice softened.

“Perhaps you do not welcome because you fear there is not enough. Not enough land, not enough wages, not enough respect. But I tell you—fear is a poor steward. It spills what it tries to hold.”

After Mass, in the courtyard under the pepper tree, Bianchi touched Giuseppe’s sleeve. “Build something that will outlast a season of shouting,” he said. “A hiring hall. A common table. Turn strangers into people everyone would be ashamed to harm.”

“Shame seems scarce,” Antonio said.

“Then we make it,” the priest replied. “Like wine.”

---

They built the table first—rough planks under the sycamores where anyone who worked a day in the vines ate a hot noon meal. Rosa kept a ledger of names and hours, and when men signed it, they signed onto the family’s protection as well. Mexicans, Irish, Chinese, two Yokuts cousins who said little and did much—work laid a grammar where politics refused to.

“Eat,” Rosa would say to the uncertain new ones, placing bread and beans and wedges of cheese. “Rest your feet. Your name is in the book.”

Li Ming began teaching Caterina characters in the afternoons—simple ones at first, for water and tree; later, more delicate, for patience and home. On Sundays, Caterina taught him the letters in “Rosa Sieli,” and he grinned when he wrote them cleanly.

“Names travel,” he said, tapping the page. “They need roads too.”

---

The boycott came quiet. Tavern orders slowed; a mercantile that had always stocked their bottles suddenly had no shelf space. One night, a railcar of Sieli barrels sat on a siding two days longer than sense could explain. When Antonio demanded to know why, the stationman lifted a helpless shoulder. “Paperwork,” he said, faintly apologetic. “It got misplaced.”

Whitcomb found them that evening, jaw set. “I’ll take two extra barrels and pay on the nail,” he said. “And I’ll pour it free for the boys who say they’re boycotting you.” He thumped his counter. “We’ll see if their convictions can stand up to a second glass.”

Not all neighbors stood back. Mrs. Pike—small, composed, hat pinned like a promise—came at dusk with a basket of eggs and a note on her husband’s letterhead: We buy at the old price. Deliver by night if you must; daylight makes cowards brave.

Tomás and Lucía doubled their hours in the rows and would not be paid more than the Irish couple did. “If they divide us,” Lucía said, “they win. We get paid together.”

Seamus played longer sets at Whitcomb’s and ended them with “Va, pensiero,” the song he’d learned from Father Bianchi, and the bar would go quiet as men who’d never seen the Po Valley suddenly pictured a river they missed without knowing its name.

---

When the window finally shattered in the farmhouse—midnight, rock through glass, Caterina’s startled cry—Giuseppe walked out onto the porch with a lantern and set it on the steps. The throwers had already run. He did not chase them. He picked the shards from the sill one by one and set them in a bowl, as if counting.

“Tomorrow,” he said, voice level, “we invite them.”

“Who?” Antonio demanded. “The cowards?”

“The town,” Giuseppe said. “A harvest supper. Everyone. Especially the men who think we would not feed them.”

“Madness,” Antonio said.

“Hospitality,” Rosa corrected, already sketching a list in her head: beans, polenta, roast lamb if Mrs. Pérez had enough, a wheel of cheese, the last of the good olives, and three jugs from the barrel she’d been saving for her name day.

They sent the priest with invitations, and Whitcomb posted one on his door. Harlan received his with a face that had learned to be unreadable. Crowe, finding a note tacked to his fence, tore it in half and then, after a moment, pocketed the pieces.

The night came warm and expectant. They strung lanterns in the sycamores and laid the long table with mismatched plates. Li Ming and his nephews arrived early and set up a pot of greens with garlic. Tomás brought peaches. Mrs. Pike brought a pie that tasted, improbably, like apology.

People came. Some to eat. Some to gawk. Some to look for offense and perhaps find it. Harlan arrived with a deliberately neutral smile. Crowe came late, hat low, two men behind him who thought their shadows made them important.

Giuseppe welcomed them the same way: “You are our neighbors. Sit, eat. A field is big enough for many roots.”

Crowe smirked. “Roots tangle.”

“Sometimes they hold each other up,” Giuseppe said.

They ate. The stew was simple and generous. The wine from the thin ’73 vintage tasted like endurance; the newer cask opened into something rounder and surprisingly kind.

Harlan lifted his glass and, after an awkward pause, said, “To Fresno,” because compromise is a learned language. Mrs. Pike followed with “To the men who build our tables,” which meant more than it sounded like.

Seamus tuned and loosed a set that carried the chatter upward into something like a common breath. Halfway through, he nodded to Father Bianchi, who hummed “Va, pensiero.” Li Ming tapped time on the table with a chopstick, smiling at the melody’s shape.

When the band fell away, when only the insects in the ditch sang, Crowe put down his cup and rose. He stared at the table, at the faces around it, as if daring the food to make him human.

“You think this changes anything,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Giuseppe’s answer was gentle. “I think it changes tonight.”

Crowe snorted. “I will not toast with heathens and papists.”

Rosa stood, the ledger open in her hands. “Then read this instead, Mr. Crowe.” She turned the book so the lantern threw the names up at him—Tomás Ortega, Seamus O’Rourke, Li Ming, José and Esteban, Mary and Conal, two Yokuts cousins whose names glowed plain and proud. “These are the people who keep this vineyard alive. If someone smashes a window or starves a barrel, you will have to tell me which name I should cross out to make you feel safe.”

He looked at the page, at the neat columns, at the stubborn arithmetic of belonging. His mouth worked. He did not answer. He left with his shadow-men, not quickly, not slowly, like a man walking away from a fence he had leaned on and found to be load-bearing.

After the last plates were cleared and the last lanterns lowered, the family sat with Seamus and Li Ming and Father Bianchi on the porch steps, their backs against the night.

“Will it hold?” Antonio asked. “This peace?”

“No,” Bianchi said. “Nothing holds by itself. But tonight you gave it nails.”

Giuseppe looked toward the rows, dark and breathing. “We will keep hammering.”

Rosa closed the ledger and set it on her lap. “I want to add another page,” she said. “A page for debts we owe. To those who stood with us when it cost them.”

“Start with Whitcomb,” Seamus said. “The man hides a brotherly heart behind that bulldog jaw.”

“And Mrs. Pike,” Caterina added, surprising herself. “For the pie.”

“Put Li Ming on every page,” Antonio said. “For staying when it was easier to go.”

Li Ming shook his head, amused. “I stay because grapes are stubborn,” he said. “And because your stew has improved.”

They laughed, a sound that felt like water at the end of a long day. Somewhere in town a poster flapped loose from a fence. Somewhere a man who had shouted was trying to sleep with a full belly and a disquiet he couldn’t name. Somewhere the rails hummed with a train hauling freight toward the dark and back again.

The vineyard listened. The ditch murmured. The stars approved nothing and forbade nothing, simply shone. Pride and prejudice divided the valley, and the Sielis had planted themselves in the split, roots laid deep in both soils, trusting that one day children would walk the rows without flinching at their own names.

“Belonging is a work,” Giuseppe said softly, to no one and to everyone. “Tomorrow we go on.”

 Grapes of Fortune, Shadows of Envy

Epigraph: San Francisco Chronicle (May 7, 1882) — “PRESIDENT ARTHUR SIGNS CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT”

---

A Reputation Grows

By the mid-1880s, the Sieli vineyard was no longer a curiosity. Taverns in Sacramento listed “Sieli’s Red” on chalkboards, and merchants in San Francisco carried their barrels alongside imported Chianti.

When Giuseppe’s eldest son, Marco, walked into town, men greeted him with a nod instead of a sneer. The family’s name, once spit like an insult, had begun to carry weight.

But with weight came envy. Neighbors who had laughed at “dago peasants” now muttered that the Sielis undercut prices, hired too many hands, or flaunted their Catholic feasts.

At Whitcomb’s, Seamus fiddled through the gossip, shaking his head. “You can grow the best grapes in California, lads, but you can’t turn vinegar tongues into wine.”

---

The Law Turns

News from the city fell heavy as spring frost. The Chronicle headline carried north on the rail: CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT PASSED.

Antonio slammed the paper on the kitchen table. “Now it is law—hatred written on paper!”

Rosa bit her lip, thinking of Li Ming’s nephews. “What will they do?”

“They will stay,” Giuseppe said firmly. “The vines remember who waters them. Our land owes them more than any law.”

But the threats sharpened. A shop in town posted: NO CHINESE, NO PAPISTS, NO PROBLEM. Crowe, older now but still venomous, declared at a rally: “The Sielis defy the will of Americans. They will pay.”

---

The Festival of the Grape

That autumn, the county fair announced its first grape and wine competition. Marco begged his father to enter. “Papa, it is our chance! If we win, no one can deny us.”

Giuseppe hesitated. “We do not grow for medals. We grow for survival.”

But Antonio clapped Marco on the back. “Sometimes survival means standing in the sun where everyone must see.”

They sent three barrels—one from the lean ’73 vintage, one from the sweeter ’78, and one fresh and bold from the current harvest.

The festival bustled with brass bands, horse races, and pie contests. When the judges lifted cups of Sieli wine, the crowd hushed. One leaned close to another. “Balanced. Honest.”

A ribbon was pinned to their cask. First Prize: Red Table Wine.

Rosa wept quietly, hand pressed to her mouth. Seamus struck up O Sole Mio on his fiddle, the tune strange and foreign but catching the crowd anyway.

---

Shadows in Triumph

But triumph carried its shadow. That night, as lanterns dimmed and families packed their wagons, Marco found graffiti scrawled on their barrel: GO BACK TO ITALY.

Antonio cursed. Giuseppe ran his hand over the words, then poured water from a jug to wash them away. “Hatred is chalk,” he said. “Wine is stain. Which lasts longer?”

---

The Choice of Legacy

As the 1890s loomed, a new question pressed. Should the Sielis join the cooperative forming among Fresno grape growers—an alliance promising stable prices and shared protection? Or remain independent, guarding their name above all?

At the kitchen table, debate burned hotter than the lamps.

Antonio: “We need strength. Alone, we are targets. Together, we cannot be ignored.”
Giuseppe: “Together, we may lose ourselves. A vine tied too tight cannot breathe.”
Rosa: “What matters is not whether we stand alone, but whether our children inherit something unbroken.”

Marco, silent until then, finally spoke. “Papa, Zio, if our name is to mean anything, it must be spoken beyond Fresno. The railroad carries more than barrels—it carries reputation. If we stay small, we will be forgotten. If we join, we risk being swallowed. But I will not live my life hiding. I would rather risk too much than leave too little.”

The room went still. Giuseppe studied his son’s face—the same determined jaw he had carried across the sea. Slowly, he nodded.

“Then we risk,” he said.

---

Epilogue of the Chapter

That year, the Sielis signed the cooperative ledger, their name inked alongside Irish, German, and even Anglo ranchers.

When Crowe sneered at them in the square, Marco met his gaze and did not flinch. “The Sieli vines are not leaving, Mr. Crowe. Perhaps it is you who should go.”

The old man muttered, but his voice had lost its thunder.

The vineyard, meanwhile, stretched row upon row, roots deep in hostile soil, leaves whispering in the wind. Pride and prejudice still circled like hawks, but for the first time, the Sielis felt the strength not only of survival but of legacy.

 A Day for Columbus

The news reached the Sielis through the San Francisco Chronicle:
“President Benjamin Harrison Declares National Holiday to Honor Columbus.”

It was 1892, and America was still young enough to crave its heroes—and frightened enough to look for scapegoats.

The year before, in New Orleans, eleven Italian immigrants had been dragged from their jail cells by an angry mob and lynched in broad daylight. Newspapers called them “dagos” and “assassins.” Few protested. The men had been accused—without proof—of murdering the city’s police chief, and when the jury acquitted them, the crowd decided to deliver its own justice.

Giuseppe Sieli set down the newspaper, his jaw tightening. “Eleven men,” he said quietly. “They worked hard, prayed hard. And for what?”

Antonio nodded, his eyes dark. “They say the mayor was there. Even the police helped.”

The vineyard lay still that afternoon. The wind carried the scent of grapes and dust, but something else hung heavier—a fear that the hatred which had once chased them from Liguria might never truly die, only change its flag.

A few months later, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed a new national holiday: Columbus Day, to mark the 400th anniversary of the explorer’s voyage. Officially, it was to celebrate courage, discovery, and faith. But for Italians across America, it was more than that—it was a peace offering, a gesture meant to heal the wound left by the lynching.

“Columbus,” Antonio said one evening, pouring a glass of their coarse red wine. “They say he was from Genoa, like us.”

Giuseppe smiled faintly. “Then maybe, for once, they’ll celebrate an Italian instead of hanging him.”

That October, the Fresno parish held a special Mass. The pews were full—men with soil under their nails, women in lace mantillas, children waving small flags of both nations. Father Bianchi spoke in English and Italian:

“Today we remember a man who crossed an ocean by faith, not knowing what waited beyond. May his courage remind our adopted country that Italians, too, are part of its story.”

Outside, after the Amen, the congregation formed a procession through the dusty streets.
Children carried banners of Our Lady and Christopher Columbus; the brass band played a shaky Star-Spangled Banner, followed by Funiculì, Funiculà.

On the sidewalk, a few Anglos watched—some smiling, others muttering. One man crossed his arms and said to another, “So now we’ve got a holiday for foreigners, do we?”

Giuseppe overheard but said nothing. “Let them talk,” he murmured to Antonio. “If we keep planting, one day our roots will outgrow their hate.”

That night, under the sycamores, the family lit candles for the murdered Italians in New Orleans. Lucia whispered a prayer for their souls; Maria added softly, “May this new day bring peace.”

Giuseppe nodded, watching the candlelight flicker. “Maybe it will,” he said. “But light always casts a shadow. Someday, they may curse this man we celebrate now—forgetting what he meant to those who needed him most.”

Antonio frowned. “You think they’ll ever turn against Columbus?”

Giuseppe shrugged. “If the world can turn against its own saints, it can turn against sailors too. History doesn’t stay still—it changes like the wind.”

The brothers fell silent, the flame between them bending but never breaking, like the vines rooted in the soil of two worlds.

---

Historical Note: The Origins of Columbus Day

In March 1891, the lynching of eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans became one of the darkest episodes in U.S. history—and one of the largest mass lynchings ever recorded on American soil. The victims had been accused of killing Police Chief David Hennessy but were acquitted at trial. A mob of thousands stormed the jail and murdered them while local officials looked on.

International outrage followed. Italy broke off diplomatic relations with the United States, and only after the U.S. paid an indemnity to the victims’ families did tensions ease.

To help repair relations with Italian Americans and to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage, President Benjamin Harrison declared October 12, 1892, a national day of observance—Columbus Day. It was meant to honor both the spirit of exploration and the contributions of Italian immigrants to the United States.

Over a century later, that same symbol—once meant to heal—would become the center of new debates over identity, history, and the meaning of discovery itself.

Wings of Man

The news came by way of the Fresno Republican, the paper creased and smudged with vineyard dust. Antonio Sieli read it aloud under the shade of the sycamore, his voice half disbelief, half wonder.

“Two brothers from North Carolina… flew a machine heavier than air. Stayed aloft for twelve seconds.”

Giuseppe looked up from mending a fence post. “Flew? As in birds?”

Antonio nodded, squinting at the small illustration of a strange contraption with wings like stretched bedsheets. “That’s what it says. A flying machine. They call it the aeroplano.”

The women paused their shelling of peas. Maria crossed herself. “Twelve seconds? That’s not flying—that’s falling with a prayer.”

Rosa laughed softly. “If God wanted men to fly, He would have given us wings. Some things are better left in Heaven.”

But Giuseppe kept staring at the image, his brow furrowed. “Still,” he said, “if they can fly even for twelve seconds… maybe someday they’ll go farther.”

Antonio shook his head. “Bah. It’s a trick. Like those snake-oil salesmen in town—‘miracle tonics’ and ‘electric carriages.’ You watch. It’ll never take off.”

Lucia smirked. “That’s what you said about the telephone.”

“And I was right!” Antonio fired back. “Half the time, you can’t even hear the person talking. Just noise and static. People should stick to writing letters. They last longer.”

The family laughed, the sound carrying across the rows like a warm breeze. In the distance, the afternoon sun lit the dust of the harvest wagons, the world still bound to earth and muscle.

But Giuseppe, ever the dreamer, kept his gaze fixed on the horizon. “Maybe not in my lifetime,” he said, “but someday men will cross oceans in the sky the way we crossed them by ship. Imagine—Italy to California in a single day.”

Maria smiled indulgently. “And I suppose they’ll serve wine and supper up there in the clouds too?”

“Why not?” Giuseppe said, eyes glinting. “If man can make vines grow in dust, who’s to say he can’t make wings out of wood and wind?”

The others chuckled and went back to their work. But that night, long after the lanterns were out, Giuseppe stood alone by the rows. The stars glittered above the valley, bright and unreachable. He thought of the sea he had once crossed, of the land he had built with his hands, and of the sky that waited, endless and untamed.

He whispered softly, “Maybe someday, even the soil will look up.”

Votes, Voices, and Vineyards

The summer of 1912 had been a hot one, even by Fresno’s standards. The air in the Sieli vineyard office felt heavy, as though the heat had slowed even the light. Yet inside the family kitchen, the conversation was electric.

Rosa set a pitcher of iced tea on the table. “You saw the paper today?” she asked. “They marched in Sacramento—women demanding the vote.”

Giuseppe looked up from his ledger, brow furrowed. “Women want to vote? What’s next, women in the vineyard giving orders to men?”

Maria, stirring tomatoes for the sauce, looked over her shoulder. “If a woman runs this household, she already gives orders to men.”

Antonio grunted. “I’m not sure I’m ready for female politicians and debates.”

In the corner, young Lucia Sieli, their niece, sat perched on a stool, listening with wide eyes. She’d read accounts in borrowed journals about Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Carrie Chapman Catt. She cleared her throat. “They say ‘no taxation without representation’ applies to women too. If women pay taxes and raise children, shouldn’t they have a say in the laws?”

Giuseppe’s expression softened. “You have a point, hija. But people fear change. They always do.”

Antonio shook his head. “Fear or not, I remember when they thought trains couldn’t cross deserts, when men said flight was a folly. They called it a fad. Now look at automobiles, airplanes—some of them take off after all.”

Maria added, quietly, “Votes are not a fad. They are a promise.”

---

The family spoke late into the evening, their shadows cast long by the lantern light. They considered how suffrage had already been granted in some states—Wyoming in 1869, Utah in 1870, and, closer to home, in parts of the West women had won school or municipal votes. (In fact, by 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment would guarantee that the vote “shall not be denied … on account of sex.”) 

Giuseppe spoke of memory. “In Italy, they have voices rising too—women demanding education, charity, rights. The world is changing, whether we like it or not.”

Rosa wiped a tear. “I want to vote someday. Not for show, but because my voice matters.”

Antonio studied her. “If women vote, they must be educated for it. Know the issues. Not just follow their husbands.”

Lucia nodded. “That’s exactly what they demand—equal voice, not political theater.”

---

Years later, when the 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, it would not instantly cure all inequalities; many women of color and in rural states still faced barriers in practice. Yet for the Sieli family, the victory was personal and symbolic—something they would mark quietly in the vineyard, with Rosa’s first ballot, with Sofia’s proud tears, and with the brothers who once scoffed now standing respectfully.

Antonio watched Rosa walk to the polling station. He whispered to Giuseppe, “Maybe the soil remembers that day.”

And in the fields, the vines nodded, as though affirming that every voice, like every shoot, deserves light to grow.

 The Age of Temperance

Epigraph: Fresno Morning Republican (Feb. 12, 1906) — “WOMEN’S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION RALLIES: ‘NO MORE WINE, NO MORE WHISKEY’”

---

A New Century

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Sieli vineyard stretched in every direction—rows upon rows of vines planted by Giuseppe and Antonio now tended by their children. The railroad station, once a bitter compromise, now shipped Sieli barrels not only to Sacramento and San Francisco, but as far as Portland and Denver.

Marco, tall and broad-shouldered, strode the rows with the quiet assurance of a man who had grown from child to steward in the shadow of vines. Caterina, bookkeeper and mediator, kept the accounts neat and the laborers loyal. Antonio, his beard silver, still cursed at mules and the weather. Giuseppe, older now, walked with a cane, but his eyes stayed sharp.

“Look,” he said one morning, tapping his stick at a row heavy with grapes. “Roots endure, even when men do not. These vines are your inheritance. Guard them better than I guarded mine.”

---

Trouble in the Air

The prosperity of the vineyard was shadowed by a growing storm. In Fresno’s courthouse square, women gathered in white dresses, carrying banners that read: Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine.

One afternoon, Rosa returned from town, cheeks flushed with indignation. “They held a rally,” she reported, setting down her basket. “Said wine is the devil’s tool. They called it poison.”

Antonio spat. “Poison? Our wine saved men through drought and plague!”

Giuseppe, calmer, frowned. “Do not dismiss them. A woman with conviction can move mountains—and voters’ hearts.”

Indeed, the local papers brimmed with headlines: TEMPERANCE UNIONS GAIN STRENGTH. Politicians whispered of statewide prohibition.

---

The Tavern Boycott

At Whitcomb’s, the old tavernkeeper—now stooped, his beard white—shook his head. “Sales are slipping. They don’t raid the bars yet, but they shame the men who walk in. One preacher stands outside, shouting names. Even my own nephew refuses to pour.”

Seamus, older but still quick on the fiddle, plucked a tune in defiance. “Music won’t dry throats forever, but it helps a spell.”

Marco leaned across the counter. “We must fight them.”

Giuseppe’s voice cut steady: “No. We must outlast them.”

---

A Divided Community

Even within Fresno’s Italian colony, debate flared. At St. Alphonsus Church, some argued that wine was sacred, part of Mass itself. Others, fearful of harassment, suggested planting raisins instead.

At a meeting in the church hall, tempers rose.

“We must protect our families,” one man said. “If they ban wine, we grow grapes for raisins. The railroads will carry them east.”

Antonio slammed his fist on the table. “Raisins! Grapes shriveled into dust! That is not our heritage. We came for vines, not dried fruit.”

Marco raised his hand. “Our heritage is survival. If we refuse to bend, we may break.”

Giuseppe, leaning on his cane, spoke last. “Wine is our name. Raisins may feed bellies, but they will not feed memory. I will not see the Sieli name dried like a grape left in the sun.”

---

The Earth Trembles

In April of 1906, news came like a wound: San Francisco in ruins, shaken by earthquake and fire.

The Morning Republican carried sketches of toppled buildings, headlines screaming: CITY DESTROYED — THOUSANDS DEAD.

The Sielis read by lamplight, silent. Caterina whispered, “Our barrels—our customers—”

Marco shook his head. “The city will rebuild. And when it does, it will need wine.”

Giuseppe murmured, “And bread, and stone, and prayer. Always prayer.”

That year’s shipments north were delayed, but when they finally went, merchants wrote back desperate for any supply. San Francisco drank Sieli wine in taverns rebuilt from ash and ruin.

---

The Preacher’s Visit

By 1908, the temperance movement had sent its apostles into every valley. One autumn afternoon, a preacher rode up the Sieli lane. He was tall, stern, with eyes like cold water. He dismounted and tipped his hat only out of form.

“You are the Sielis?”

Giuseppe nodded. “We are.”

The man’s voice carried the cadence of pulpits. “Do you not see the destruction your drink brings? Families ruined, men in the gutter, wages squandered on the devil’s brew?”

Antonio bristled. “Our wine is food. Medicine. Memory. You dare—”

Giuseppe silenced him with a hand. “Our wine, sir, is moderation. We teach our children to drink with reverence, not to drown in it. If men abuse it, blame their choices, not our vines.”

The preacher’s jaw clenched. “Your vines will wither. The law is coming.”

He turned and mounted his horse, leaving dust and threat in his wake.

---

Legacy at the Table

That winter, the family gathered around the table. Giuseppe, old now, his hands trembling, lifted a glass.

“When we came here, men spat on our name. Called us dagos, garlic eaters, papists. We survived mobs, drought, and envy. Now they come with laws instead of fists. But it is the same struggle.”

Marco lifted his glass in answer. “And we will endure again.”

Caterina touched his hand. “Not by hiding, Marco. By teaching. By showing them what wine truly is.”

Giuseppe’s eyes glistened. “Yes. We must outlast them—not with anger, but with roots.”

They drank together, the wine dark and alive, even as whispers of Prohibition rustled through the valley like dry wind over vines.

_____________________________________________

The Fields of Struggle

By the turn of the century, California was no longer the frontier—it was a factory of sun and sweat. Orchards blanketed the San Joaquin Valley, and vineyards rolled over every hill that could hold a root. Labor was the crop behind every crop, and the men who bent their backs for pennies kept the state alive.

The Sielis watched from their small vineyard outside Fresno, proud that their hands alone tended their vines. They weren’t rich, but they were free. That freedom, Giuseppe often said, was the true harvest.

Still, they could not ignore what the valley had become—a kingdom of growers and bosses, of strikes and broken promises.

One afternoon in 1913, the Fresno Republican arrived by wagon, the headline splashed across the page:

“RIOT AT WHEATLAND—FOUR DEAD IN HOP FIELD STRIKE.”

Antonio read aloud the words of the sheriff’s report: angry workers, armed police, the chaos of gunfire. “They only wanted clean water,” he muttered. “Shade from the sun. A fair day’s wage.”

Lucía crossed herself. “And for that, they are killed.”

Giuseppe nodded. “We came here to escape the masters of Europe. But men find new masters everywhere.”

The Cry of the Workingman

The years that followed were restless ones. In Los Angeles, the Times building bombing of 1910 still haunted the papers—proof, some said, that the unions had gone mad. But the Sielis knew better than to believe everything printed by the rich.

When an organizer named Manuel Torres passed through the valley one evening, his shoes caked with dust and his voice hoarse from speaking to the fields, Giuseppe gave him bread and wine. “You fight for justice?” he asked.

“For dignity,” Torres said. “They call us agitators. But we only want to be paid in money, not tokens. To drink water that isn’t poison.”

Giuseppe nodded slowly. “Then you fight for something holy.”

Between Rows and Ranks

Antonio kept a small ledger of expenses and prayers. That night, he added a line not meant for the books:

“A vineyard grows because it is tended. A people grow because they are heard.”

When the Industrial Workers of the World—the Wobblies—marched through Fresno and Stockton, singing “Solidarity Forever,” some of the Sieli neighbors spat at them, calling them anarchists and foreigners. But Giuseppe and Lucía stood by the road and tipped their hats as the marchers passed.

“Foreigners,” Antonio scoffed. “That’s what they called us once.”

Lucía replied, “And will again, when we forget to be kind.”

The Sielis never joined a union, but they quietly raised wages when harvest came, shared meals with their laborers, and let them rest under the vines at noon. In return, the workers stayed loyal.

Word spread that the Sielis’ vines never went untended, even in the lean years.

The Roots of Tomorrow

By the late 1920s, as the Great Depression loomed, the Sieli family began to hear whispers of new movements—farmers talking of cooperatives, priests preaching about “the rights of the worker.”

And in dusty fields not far away, a boy was born who would someday become a name known to all—César Chávez.

Rosa, barely a child then, remembered hearing of his family. “They worked near Selma,” her mother said. “Good people. Mexican, like the ones who helped us plant the west field after the flood.”

“They’ll have to fight for everything,” Giuseppe sighed. “The land doesn’t give justice easily.”

Years later, when farmworkers marched under Chávez’s banner in the 1960s, carrying signs that read Huelga! and Sí Se Puede, the Sielis would remember that prophecy.

They would remember the songs that drifted through the fields in 1913, the sound of hope beneath the roar of injustice.

And Rosa, grown and wise, would one day tell her children, “The vines that feed us were watered with more than rain. They were watered with struggle.”

As the labor strikes quieted and the new century marched on, the Sielis turned their attention back to the vineyard. But the world would not stay quiet for long. By 1914, the newspapers spoke of gunfire across the ocean—of alliances, assassinations, and the names of places most Californians could not yet find on a map. Pietro, restless and full of conviction, listened to the stories of Europe’s turmoil and felt a pull he could not name.

“Another man’s war,” Dominic muttered. But Pietro only looked toward the horizon, where the vines met the sky, and said, “Maybe. But it will shape our world all the same.”

_______________________________________________________

By 1915, the vineyard rows stood firm against the wind, but the headlines from Europe rattled the family’s calm like hail on a roof. The San Francisco Chronicle lay open on the kitchen table, its pages smelling faintly of ink and coffee. The front page screamed of battles at Ypres and Verdun—trenches that swallowed whole towns, clouds of poison gas drifting over fields that once grew grain.

Marco pushed his plate aside and jabbed a thick finger at the map printed in the paper. “Look at this madness. Austria against Serbia, Germany against France, England pulling in her empire—and now Italy too, though our grandfathers never called themselves Italians.”

Across the table, Dominic, older now but still sharp, gave a dry snort. “Our ancestors were Ligurians. Genoese. They knew their vineyards, their parishes, their villages. Not this nonsense of nations tearing each other apart. But now they fly the tricolor and shout for glory. I say, let the kings kill each other if they must. America is our home.”

Sofia, still young then but never shy, tilted her head. “And yet, Uncle Dom, don’t you feel it a little? A pull when you hear that Italy has entered the war? As if we’re supposed to care because of where Nonno’s bones lie?”

Marco’s eyes softened. “I care for the soil that feeds us, child. But that soil is here. Our roots are here now. That flag outside”—he gestured toward the porch where the Stars and Stripes hung still in the evening air—“that is the flag I would fight for, if I must.”

Rosa’s eldest son, barely out of school, leaned forward. “Wilson says America is neutral. But how long can that last? The Germans sink ships, the English beg for help. Sooner or later, we’ll be dragged in.”

Giuseppe’s eldest, hair silver at the edges now, clasped his hands. “A vineyard can be neutral. A man can try. But a nation? No. The world will not let America stay out forever.”

For a moment, the kitchen was hushed but for the ticking of the wall clock and the distant cry of a night bird. Then Marco spoke again, his voice low but resolute. “If war comes, we will not fight for kings or emperors. We will fight as Americans. And when the war is over, God willing, we will come back to these rows and plant again. That will be our victory.”

The Mask and the Vine (1918)

The guns had fallen silent overseas. But back home in Fresno, a quieter enemy was already spreading through the valley.

The first cough came from the packing shed.
By the time the Sielis heard about it, men all over Fresno were calling it “the Spanish fever,” though nobody knew where it really came from. Some said soldiers brought it from the trenches of France, others whispered that it started in Kansas. All anyone agreed on was that it came fast and it came for everyone.

By October, the church bells tolled more for funerals than for weddings. The newspaper headlines screamed MASKS REQUIRED—CITY LOCKED DOWN.

At the Sieli vineyard, Giuseppe folded the paper with a sigh. “They’re saying no Mass, no schools, no saloons. The sheriff says we stay home.”

Lucia crossed herself. “Then we stay home. God can hear prayers from the kitchen as well as the church.”

But Antonio frowned, arms crossed, a smear of dust on his cheek. “Stay home? The vines don’t wait. Grapes don’t care what the newspapers say.”

“You’ll care if you can’t breathe,” Lucia snapped. “You saw Mr. Pagani’s boy. Strong as a mule, gone in three days.”

Rosa, barely sixteen, looked up from sewing a mask of cheesecloth and twine. “They say you have to wear one everywhere,” she said. “Even outside.”

Antonio muttered, “If God wanted men to cover their faces, He’d have made us born that way.”

That night, Giuseppe stood on the porch as dusk fell over the vineyard. He could see the glow of lanterns down the road where Whitcomb’s store used to be bustling. Now the streets were silent, the laughter gone. Only the coughing carried through the air.

---

The next morning, the family gathered around the radio—one of the few in the neighborhood. A nasal voice from San Francisco read the orders again:

“All gatherings prohibited. Masks mandatory. Violators subject to fine or jail.”

Dominic, their cousin, burst out laughing. “Fined for not wearing a rag? I’d rather take my chances.”

“You’ll take them with me, then,” said Giuseppe firmly. “And you’ll wear that rag, because it’s not just your life you gamble with—it’s mine.”

“But it’s not even proven!” Dominic shot back. “You think a bit of cloth will stop death?”

Lucia slammed her spoon down so hard it rattled the plates. “You think arrogance will? You want to call yourself a man, start by protecting your family.”

The kitchen fell silent except for the bubbling of the soup. Outside, a crow cawed in the cold wind. The sound felt like a warning.

---

By mid-November, the sickness reached their own road. Old Mr. Pagani, who had refused the mask, was buried two days after he took to bed. His daughter watched the funeral from behind a window—no mourners allowed, only the priest, who prayed from a distance, his own face veiled in white gauze.

That night, the family held their own rosary at the table.
“Saint Rocco, protector of the sick,” Rosa prayed, fingers trembling, “watch over us.”

“Saint Rocco won’t help fools,” Antonio muttered, staring into his wine.
Lucia glared at him. “Then thank heaven you married a stubborn woman.”

---

In town, tempers boiled. A group calling themselves the Anti-Mask League of Fresno staged a protest outside City Hall. Banners waved:
NO MORE TYRANNY!
MY FACE, MY FREEDOM!
OPEN THE CHURCHES!

Antonio went, out of curiosity more than anger. When he returned, his voice was a mixture of shame and disbelief. “They shouted at the police, at the priest. One man tore off his mask and coughed on the steps like it was a joke.”

Giuseppe’s eyes hardened. “And?”

“And he was dead four days later,” Antonio said quietly.

---

Christmas came muted. No midnight Mass, no choir, no crowded feast. The family set the table anyway—bread, wine, lentils, roasted quail. Lucia placed a candle in the window for the souls of those lost. “The angels will find their way,” she said softly.

When the ban finally lifted in the spring of 1919, the townspeople filled the reopened church. The priest’s voice broke as he gave the homily: “We have buried the proud and the poor alike. Let this be our lesson—humility is not weakness. It is wisdom.”

Outside afterward, some people cheered, tearing off their masks. Others kept them folded neatly in their pockets, unsure whether to believe the danger was gone.

Giuseppe said nothing. He took Rosa’s hand as they walked home, past fields just starting to green again. “The world forgets too easily,” he murmured. “But the soil remembers. It always does.”

Rosa looked up at him, eyes bright with youth and fear and hope.
“Do you think it will ever happen again, Papa? A sickness like this?”

He hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally. “And when it does, they’ll argue just like we did. Some will wear the mask, some won’t. But maybe—maybe a few will remember what we learned.”

He looked out over the vines, the same ones his descendants would someday tend through another plague, another century.

The earth, patient and unjudging, waited to see if mankind would remember its own lessons—or repeat them.

 Dry Years, Secret Barrels

Epigraph: Fresno Morning Republican (Jan. 17, 1920) — “NATION GOES DRY: VOLSTEAD ACT TAKES EFFECT”

The Last Legal Pour

On the night before Prohibition began, the Sieli family gathered in the farmhouse kitchen. Lanterns flickered, casting long shadows on the walls. A single barrel, tapped fresh, stood at the center like an honored guest.

Giuseppe—frail now, his hair white as frost—raised his glass with trembling hands. “This may be the last time the law lets us drink what we grew.”

Antonio grunted. “Law or no law, men will not give up wine. They will just drink it in cellars instead of taverns.”

Marco, now the master of the vineyard, looked at his father. “And we? What will we do?”

Giuseppe’s eyes, clouded but fierce, locked on him. “We do as we always have. We endure. The vine was never meant for easy soil.”

They drank in silence, the weight of history heavy in each swallow.

---

The New Reality

The Volstead Act changed Fresno overnight. Taverns shuttered. Barrels were smashed in the streets. Signs appeared: KEEP THE VALLEY DRY.

But railcars bound east began loading “grape bricks”—compressed blocks of Sieli grapes sold with a warning: Do not dissolve in water and do not allow to ferment, or wine will result.

Marco laughed bitterly when he saw the labels. “We sell them instructions on how not to make wine. And every man who buys them ignores the warning.”

Caterina, ever the bookkeeper, worried aloud. “The government has agents now. If they come here—”

Antonio slammed his hand on the table. “Let them come! They cannot make raisins out of our blood.”

But Marco shook his head. “We will not fight them with fists. We will fight them with cleverness.”

---

The Church Loophole

It was Father Bianchi—older now, but still sharp—who arrived one afternoon with the solution. He sat at the kitchen table, sipping cautiously from a hidden glass.

“The law allows sacramental wine,” he explained. “For Mass. For Communion. Every parish needs it. But the paperwork—ah! It requires trusted suppliers. Men whose names are strong.”

Marco’s brow furrowed. “You ask us to sell to the Church?”

“I ask you to save the vineyard,” Bianchi said. “The Lord works through many vessels—even barrels.”

Giuseppe, from his chair, nodded. “Wine began as sacrament before it was commerce. Let it return.”

So the Sielis filled casks for parishes from Fresno to San Francisco. Their vineyard became, in part, holy ground.

---

Visitors in the Night

But not all their customers carried rosaries.

One evening in 1922, a black motorcar rolled up the lane, headlights cutting the vines. Two men stepped out—slick suits, city accents, the scent of cigar smoke and money.

“Mr. Sieli?” one asked, voice smooth as oil. “We represent buyers in San Francisco who handle distribution. Discreet distribution. We’ll pay twice market price. Cash.”

Antonio’s fists curled. “Bootleggers.”

The man smiled. “Entrepreneurs.”

Marco hesitated. The vineyard needed money. Repairs, wages, new vines. But Giuseppe’s voice, frail but firm, cut through the silence:

“Our wine carries our name. I will not see it poured in speakeasies beside poison gin.”

The men exchanged glances. One shrugged. “Suit yourself. Others will not be so particular.” They tipped their hats and left in a roar of engine and dust.

Antonio muttered, “One day they’ll come back with guns instead of hats.”

Marco nodded grimly. “And we will be ready.”

---

Tensions in the Valley

Prohibition bred strange alliances. Some farmers ripped out vines for raisins, cursing the past. Others thrived in shadows, building fortunes selling to bootleggers.

At a meeting of the growers’ cooperative, accusations flew. “The Sielis think they’re saints, hiding behind the Church,” one German farmer sneered.

Marco answered calmly. “Better saints than thieves. Better Mass than mob.”

Still, the family felt the pressure. Whispers followed them in town. Some called them smugglers, others traitors to Italian neighbors who sold freely to bootleggers.

Caterina, steady as always, told her brothers: “Let them whisper. When the law changes—and it will change—our name must be clean enough to drink.”

Ashes of Gold

The news came up the valley like smoke carried on the wind: forty-seven miners trapped in the Argonaut Mine in Jackson, the worst mining disaster in California’s history.

For days, the Sielis followed every update in the Fresno Republican and the Sacramento Bee. The papers spoke of fire, of gas, of rescue shafts that collapsed before they reached the men. Antonio Sieli set the newspaper down slowly and rubbed his temples. “We almost went there once,” he murmured. “After the war, when times were hard.”

Giuseppe nodded, remembering the letter they had received years before from a friend in Amador County, promising steady pay for strong backs. “God spared us,” he said softly. “But not them.”

Rosa crossed herself. “They said most of the miners were Italians,” she whispered. “From Piemonte, Liguria, Sicily. They left their homes like we did, for work.”

The family sat in silence. Outside, the vines shimmered under the late-summer sun, each leaf bright and alive — a cruel contrast to the dark shafts where their countrymen still lay.

That Sunday, after Mass, Father Bianchi led prayers for the dead. When the bells tolled, Giuseppe removed his hat and stood at the vineyard gate, staring toward the east where the foothills rose. “We came here chasing gold,” he said to Antonio. “But what we found that shines lasts longer.”

Antonio nodded. “The earth takes the miners,” he said. “But she gives us the vines.”

The Church That Would Not Bow (1923)

By the early 1920s, the old adobe chapel the Sielis and their neighbors had built half a century before was little more than a memory holding itself upright. Its plaster flaked like dry bread. Its roof sagged under the weight of a hundred valley summers. Even the bell had grown tired, its once-clear ring now a hoarse tremor that faded into the wind.

But Father Leone, the new parish priest sent from San Francisco, saw what others could not.
“This house was born of survival,” he told the congregation one Sunday morning, his Italian accent still thick and musical. “But survival is not enough. It must be reborn—a church worthy of the faith that built it.”

And so, for two years, hammers sang beside the rosary. Brick by brick, the people of the valley raised a cathedral where once there had been a mission hut. The plans had come from Genoa itself—a Romanesque revival crowned with a modest bell tower and tiled roof that shimmered crimson in the California sun. Yet the builders had given it a California soul: wide Spanish-style arches, Moorish patterns in the plaster, and courtyards shaded by olive trees.

When it was done, the church seemed to rise from the very soil like a promise fulfilled.
The façade—cream stucco trimmed with terracotta—glowed against the blue valley sky. Twin doors of carved oak opened into a sanctuary washed in warm gold light. Inside, stained glass windows told the story of the Virgin, St. Francis of Assisi, and the Sacred Heart—each pane brought by ship from Italy and set lovingly by hand.

In the side alcoves, saints stood like sentinels: St. Joseph holding a lily, St. Anthony cradling the Christ Child, St. Catherine with her wheel. Their faces were painted in the soft hues of fresco and candlelight. The air smelled of beeswax and incense, of polished wood and olive oil.

The high altar, built of marble quarried in the Sierra foothills, gleamed like sunlight on stone. Behind it rose a painted dome—Mary crowned Queen of Heaven, surrounded by cherubs who looked suspiciously like the parish’s children. Above the tabernacle, gold leaf letters declared: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam — To the Greater Glory of God.

Opening day dawned clear and radiant, the San Joaquin wind carrying the mingled scents of vineyards and fresh bread. Every family came dressed in their finest. Women wore lace mantillas. Men carried rosaries in their pockets like secret talismans. A brass band from Fresno’s Little Italy tuned up in the courtyard, their trumpets gleaming like halos in the sun.

But across the street, another gathering formed. A smaller one. Louder.

A man in a brown hat held up a wooden sign: “NO POPERY IN AMERICA!”
Beside him, another shouted, “Papists! Idol-worshippers! Go back to Rome!”
Their accents were sharp with the high nasal twang of the Midwest—men who had come west for work and brought their prejudice with them.

Giuseppe’s son, Marco Sieli clenched his jaw as he guided his mother, Rosa, toward the church steps.
“Don’t look at them,” he murmured.
But Rosa’s eyes lingered. “They used to call us dagos,” she said softly. “Now they call us idolaters. Always another name for the same hate.”

Father Leone appeared at the top of the steps in full vestments—crimson and gold glinting like flame. He lifted his hand, not in rebuke but in blessing. “Peace be with you,” he called to the protesters. His voice carried calm authority, the kind that no anger could reach.

One man spat into the dust. “You’ll burn for that idol house!”

The priest smiled faintly. “Then may the flames light the way,” he said, turning to his flock. “Come, children of God. Let us dedicate His home.”

The brass band struck up When the Saints Go Marching In. The congregation followed, singing Ave Maria in Italian, their voices rising like incense. The taunts from the roadside faded beneath the music. Inside, the sunlight poured through stained glass, scattering color over the bowed heads and clasped hands of a people who had earned their sanctuary.

During the homily, Father Leone spoke from the pulpit, his voice both gentle and firm:
“They say we worship statues,” he said. “But we do not kneel to stone—we kneel to the love that made the stone holy. They say we do not belong, yet our prayers have tilled this earth as faithfully as our hands. We came with rosaries, not rifles. And still they fear us. But today, let them see—not fear—but faith.”

The church erupted in applause. The bell in the tower rang for the first time, its tone rich and sure, echoing through the fields and over the vineyards.

That night, Rosa stood in the courtyard, looking up at the bell tower against the dusk. “They said we would never build this,” she murmured.
Marco placed a hand on her shoulder. “They say a lot of things,” he replied. “But the walls still stand.”

From somewhere beyond the olive trees came the last faint echo of the protestors, their anger already fading into the hum of crickets. Inside the church, candles still burned before the saints. The Virgin glowed softly in the dark, serene and unbent—a silent reminder that faith, once rooted, does not bow to scorn.

As the Sieli family lingered beneath the new bell tower, Rosa looked up at the carved stone cross catching the last of the sunset. “May our children, and their children after them, never forget what this church cost to build,” she said quietly.

Giuseppe nodded, his voice low but steady. “And may they keep the faith alive,” he added. “Not just in their prayers—but in their hearts, in their homes, and in their streets. So that even when we’re gone, this church will still remember who we were.”

The family stood together in silence, the last rays of gold brushing their faces. None of them could know that a century later, their descendants would still march under the same sun—Ave Maria on their lips, the same faith carrying them through a changed world.

---

Shadows of 1924

Just as the family adjusted to Prohibition, another law cast its shadow over their lives. In Washington, Congress debated a new immigration bill, one aimed at halting the “flood” of foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe. Politicians railed against Italians, Jews, Poles, and Greeks as “undesirable.” Catholics, they warned, would never be true Americans, beholden only to Rome.

When the Immigration Act of 1924 passed, the quotas slashed arrivals from Italy to almost nothing. Newspapers in Fresno declared it a victory for “American stock.” At the farmhouse table, Caterina read the headlines with shaking hands. “They would have barred Papa. They would have barred all of us.”

Antonio spat. “They want us for labor but not for neighbors. They’ll take our vines but not our children.”

Marco, weary, folded the paper. “We cannot fight laws in Washington. We can only keep the vineyard alive.”

But Sofia’s great-uncle Pietro, then just a boy listening at the door, would never forget the bitterness in the room.

Not all in politics agreed with the restriction. On the radio, fiery voices like Congressman Fiorello La Guardia of New York defended Italians and immigrants of every stripe. “America,” he thundered, “is not a fortress. It is a promise. And that promise is not built on fear.”

In the valley, such words felt like distant thunder—comforting, but too far away to stop the storm.

---

The Passing of a Generation

In 1925, Giuseppe passed away, rosary in his hand, surrounded by family. His last words were whispered in Ligurian: Le radici sono più forti del vento. The roots are stronger than the wind.

At his funeral, Father Bianchi lifted a chalice of sacramental Sieli wine. “This man came to a land that tried to strip him of name, faith, and livelihood. He left behind not gold, but vines that grow still.”

Antonio wept openly. Marco, jaw clenched, vowed silently: The vineyard will not fall while I breathe.

---

The Raid

In 1928, as rumors of repeal began to stir, the vineyard faced its fiercest trial. A pair of federal agents arrived unannounced, demanding entry. “We’ve had reports,” one barked, “of illegal sales from this farm.”

Marco led them to the barn, where rows of barrels stood. “Sacramental wine,” he said evenly, producing papers stamped with diocesan seals.

The agents sneered. “Convenient.” One struck a barrel with his boot, splashing red across the floor. He dipped a finger, tasted, and spat. “Too good for priests.”

Antonio’s fists shook, but Caterina stepped forward. “If you accuse us, bring proof. Until then, you insult the Church as much as us.”

The agents, frustrated, left with threats. But the vineyard knew how close it had come to ruin.

The Sielis vs. The Klan

The long oak table creaked under the weight of bread, cheese, and a stew that smelled of garlic and tomatoes. The lamp above swung gently, casting yellow light across tired faces. Marco sat at the head, his sleeves rolled, a wine jug by his elbow. Across from him sat Elijah Turner, one of the men who’d worked the vines that season. He was quiet at first, his hands folded, shoulders broad but hunched, as though he carried more than one life’s worth of burdens.

After a silence, he began.

“My mama and daddy were born in chains,” Elijah said slowly. “I grew up hearin’ about whips, about the block, about families torn apart and sold like cattle. They were freed before I was born, sure—but freedom don’t always mean free. Down in Mississippi, they still called us boy. Still wouldn’t let us drink at the same fountain, still sent us to the back door for scraps. White hoods ridin’ at night, burnin’ crosses, beatin’ men for not steppin’ off the sidewalk fast enough.”

He paused, eyes low. The clink of a spoon echoed in the hush.

“I thought maybe California would be different,” he went on. “Folks said there was work out here, vineyards that needed hands. Thought maybe I’d get treated like a man, not just a shadow. But I found out quick… hate don’t care much about state lines. They call us the same names, give us the same looks. Only difference is the sun burns hotter.”

He looked up then, meeting Marco’s gaze. “But I never once thought I’d sit at a table like this. With people called ‘white’—folks like you—who treat me like kin. That… that near broke me, when you asked me to sit and eat.”

The room was quiet, the fire snapping in the stove. Marco reached for the jug, poured wine into Elijah’s glass, and raised his own.

“You listen to me, Elijah,” Marco said, his voice steady. “We know a thing or two about being spat on. Back in Italy, they called us dirt farmers. Here in California, they call us dago, garlic eater, papist. You think we’re white in their eyes? Bah.” He tapped his chest. “To us, none of that matters. You are a man. God made you. That is enough.”

Vincenzo leaned forward, nodding. “The Anglos treat us different, just like they do you. They don’t see us as the same as them. But we—” he motioned to his brothers, to Marco, to Elijah—“we know better. We know blood is blood, work is work, and a man who keeps his word is worth more than ten who spit at him.”

Elijah’s throat worked as he swallowed. “I never thought I’d hear words like that from any white man.”

Marco gave a wry smile. “Then maybe you ain’t sat with the right kind of men yet. Here, we don’t see color. We see children of God. That’s all.”

The lamp swayed again, shadows dancing along the wall. For a moment, there was peace around the table—bread breaking, wine passing, laughter warming the edges of pain.

None of them knew that before the night was out, the peace would be shattered by torches at the gate.

Prohibition brought more than dry laws to Fresno County. It brought suspicion, raids, and the kind of men who hid their faces behind white hoods. And one night, under a moonlit sky, the Sielis learned what it meant when the Klan came knocking.

The night was black as pitch over the vineyard, the rows faint silver in the moonlight. The air smelled of dust and grapes ripening on the vine. Out front of the Sieli home, twelve men stood in a crooked line, candles flickering in their hands, rifles and shotguns glinting dully in the dark. White robes dragged the dirt; their hoods bobbed like specters.

At their head, the Grand Dragon, Calvin Rourke—a man whose name carried fear in the county—took a step forward. His red-embroidered cross caught the glow of flame.

“We heard tell you’ve got a nigger hidin’ in there,” Rourke called, his voice flat and mean.

Marco Sieli, broad-shouldered, with the faintest trace of his Ligurian accent, stepped out onto the porch. He wore no hat, only a white shirt with the sleeves rolled, his arms knotted from years in the field.

“A what?” Marco asked, eyes narrowing.

“A nigger. A negro,” Rourke repeated.

Marco let out a short, hard laugh. “Well, why didn’t you just say so? But no, I won’t hand him over. I eat with who I please. This is a free country, and he is a man. I treat men like men.”

Behind Marco, the screen door creaked. His cousins—Vincenzo, Paul, and Carlo—stepped out, rifles and pistols in hand. They fanned behind him on the porch, silent shadows with sharp eyes.

Rourke sneered. “That’s the trouble with you spaghetti-benders. You don’t know your place. You don’t know how things work in this country. You need to learn—or else pack up and scuttle back to Italy.”

Marco’s jaw tightened. “My family has been here for decades. I was born here. I am as American as you.”

“You ain’t no American,” Rourke spat. “Not when you hire and break bread with niggers.”

Marco stood tall, his voice steady. “Actually, that makes me even more American.”

From down the lane came the crunch of tires over gravel. A Ford Model A rolled into the yard, headlights cutting through the dust. Sheriff Jack Hollis climbed out, tugging down his hat. He saw the rifles, the robes, the hard faces.

“What in the devil’s goin’ on here?” he barked.

At once, some of the Klansmen lowered their weapons, others shuffled their feet. Rourke didn’t flinch. He kept his eyes on Marco.

“Nothing at all, Sheriff,” Rourke said coolly. “Just a neighborly talk.” He leaned closer, his hood brushing the night air. “This isn’t finished, dago.”

Slowly, the Klansmen retreated, their candles bobbing like will-o’-the-wisps as they melted into the dark rows of vines.

The Sheriff lingered, hands on his belt. He knew both the Sielis and the Klan. Both gave to his election campaigns, both carried weight in town. Neutrality was the safest game.

“Any trouble here, Mr. Sieli?” Hollis asked, voice low.

Marco glanced back. His kin had already hidden their guns behind the door. “No trouble, Sheriff. Just talk.”

Hollis studied him a moment, then nodded and climbed back in his car. Dust kicked up as he rolled away.

Inside, with the lamps turned low, the family gathered around Marco. Paul’s voice broke the silence.

“Maybe… maybe we oughta do what they want,” he muttered. “Stop hirin’ coloreds. Stop breakin’ bread with ’em. Lord knows I don’t like it, but you saw those boys. They’re set for war.”

Marco turned, eyes flashing. “Are you out of your mind? We are not like them. Negroes are men—children of God same as us—and we’ll treat them so.”

“But Marco,” Vincenzo pressed, “if we keep this up, more trouble will come. If we want peace, if we want the vineyard to prosper, we gotta fit in. Act like the rest.”

“Fit in?” Marco snapped. “They still call us dago, wop, garlic-eater. You think treatin’ colored folk badly will make them love us? Never. They’ll never truly accept us. So long as our name is Sieli, we will always be different.” He thumped his chest. “And I say, so be it. Better to stand upright with dignity than crawl on our bellies beggin’ for scraps. We’ll run this vineyard honest, and we’ll break bread with who we damn well please.”

Silence filled the room, heavy as the night. Outside, the vines swayed, whispering against the dark.

The first warning came with the smell of smoke.

It was just past midnight when young Paul Sieli jolted awake to the frantic barking of dogs. From the upstairs window, he saw it: a thin, ugly orange line cutting through the vineyard rows, spreading fast with the valley wind. Flames licking up the trellises, snapping vines that had taken years to grow.

“Fire!” he shouted, scrambling into his boots.

The whole house erupted. Marco burst from his room with a rifle slung over his shoulder, Lucia pulling on her shawl, Caterina rushing the children down the stairs. Women carried buckets, children clutched at skirts, the air thick already with smoke.

By the time they reached the yard, they could see shadows moving out by the road — white hoods in the moonlight. The Klansmen didn’t bother to hide this time. Torches arced through the dark, landing with sickening thuds among the vines. Laughter carried on the wind.

“Goddamn cowards!” Marco roared, sprinting toward the fire line. Paul grabbed at his arm.

“They want you out there alone, Marco!”

A shotgun cracked, pellets scattering dirt near the porch. The women screamed. Marco dropped low, returning fire into the darkness.

From the road came the Grand Dragon’s voice — Calvin Rourke, hood off this time, his slicked hair catching the firelight. “How’s it feel, dago? Still think you’re American now? Let’s see if you eat with your nigger friends after we burn your land to ash!”

The words stung worse than the smoke. From inside the doorway came a rasping shout — old Antonio Sieli, now frail but still fierce, leaning on his cane. “Buckets! Form a line! Save the house first!”

The children and women scrambled to the well, tossing pails down, heaving them up, passing water in frantic rhythm. Flames gnawed closer to the barn. Inside were the barrels of pressed grape — the year’s harvest, their survival.

“Not the barn,” Paul muttered. He took off running with two older cousins, rifles in hand. Shots cracked, and one hooded figure cried out before scrambling into the vines.

The Klansmen fired back, but scattered as the Sielis returned fire from the porch. The vineyard echoed with shouts, smoke, and the roar of flames.

Then — headlights. A motorcar tearing up the road. Sheriff Hollis again. He leapt from the Ford, revolver drawn, shouting, “That’s enough! Drop your weapons!”

But the Klansmen melted back into the dark, their torches left smoldering in the dirt. One last voice, Rourke’s, floated on the smoke: “This ain’t finished. Next time we come, we don’t just burn vines.”

The fire took half a row of grapes before it was smothered. The barn, miraculously, stood. By dawn the vineyard stank of charred wood and ash. Blackened leaves curled like fists. The family collapsed in exhaustion, soot-streaked and hollow-eyed.

Marco stood among them, hands raw from buckets, rifle still slung. He looked at the ruined vines and then at his kin. “They think they can scare us,” he said hoarsely. “But this land has our name on it. Giuseppe and I’s father planted it with his hands. We’ll plant again. We’ll plant twice as much.”

Elijah Turner, the Black worker who’d dined with them days before, stood at his side, eyes wet from smoke. “Then I’ll plant with you,” he said. “I know fire. I know hate. But I also know roots. Roots don’t die easy.”

The family drew close, arms on shoulders, a circle against the dawn. The fire had not broken them. It had bound them tighter.

And in the ash, new seeds waited.

_________________________________

The night was still when Marco Sieli slipped from the vineyard. He carried no lantern. Just his Colt, heavy against his hip, and the steady rhythm of his boots on the dirt road.

Calvin Rourke’s house sat at the edge of town, a big white frame thing with columns he didn’t earn and lace curtains his wife kept neat. From the road it looked like every respectable Anglo’s home — but Marco knew the man behind the drapes, the Grand Dragon of the local Klan.

The door wasn’t locked. Of course it wasn’t. Who in town would dare step across Rourke’s threshold? Marco did.

He found him in the parlor, nursing a glass of bourbon, his hood tossed on a chair like a forgotten napkin. Rourke’s slick hair gleamed in the lamplight. He didn’t even have time to stand before Marco had the pistol drawn, the hammer back with a click that froze the air.

“Jesus Christ,” Rourke muttered, hands lifting. “You outta your mind, dago?”

Marco stepped forward, the barrel steady as a rail. “Don’t move. You so much as breathe crooked, they’ll be mopping you off your own rug.”

Rourke sneered, but his eyes flicked toward the revolver. “You think you can scare me, foreigner? You ain’t one of us. You never will be. That vineyard of yours won’t stand ten years if I—”

“Shut your mouth,” Marco snapped, pressing the gun closer. His accent thickened when he was angry, vowels rounder, sharper. “You think that sheet makes you a king? A Grand Dragon, a Grand Poobah, whatever fool title you give yourself — it don’t scare me. Not after what you did.”

Rourke tried to steady his voice. “You kill me here, and my men will hang your whole family before dawn.”

Marco leaned in, his face inches away. His voice dropped to a growl. “Listen careful. We’re Italians. And if you’ve been readin’ the papers lately, you’ll know what that means. Chicago. New York. Philadelphia. Even right here in California — Italians don’t roll over when men in hoods come knockin’. We bury our dead, we say our prayers, and then we fight back. Hard.”

Rourke’s throat bobbed. He tried to laugh, but it came out hollow. “So what are you, some gangster? Some bootlegger? You telling me you’re one of them?”

Marco let the question hang. He didn’t need to answer. Instead, he shoved the muzzle harder against Rourke’s chest, right where his heart beat beneath the starched shirt.

“We’re good men,” Marco said, voice rising, fierce with conviction. “Farmers. Workers. We tend vines, we build families, we mind our business. But good men can only be pushed so far. You light one more torch, you whisper one more threat, and I swear by God and all the saints — I’ll show you just how bad a good man can get.”

Silence. The clock on the mantel ticked.

Rourke’s lip trembled, just for a second. Marco caught it. He stepped back slow, lowering the pistol but never taking his eyes off the man.

“You remember this night,” Marco said. “Remember it next time you think about comin’ to my land. The Sielis don’t scare. Not from men like you. Not ever.”

Then he was gone, out into the cold night, the echoes of his boots fading into the dark. Behind him, Rourke sat slumped in his parlor chair, staring at the spot where Marco had stood — the hood still lying there, empty, as useless as the title that came with it.

____________________________________________________________

The Klan hall smelled of kerosene and sweat. The lamps burned low, throwing long shadows across the wooden floorboards. A massive American flag hung behind the dais where Calvin Rourke sat, his hood folded neatly on the table beside him like a crown set aside.

The door creaked open. Sheriff Hollis stepped in, boots heavy, hat low over his brow. Two Klansmen straightened from the wall, rifles slung, but Rourke waved them off.

“Well, if it ain’t the law,” Rourke sneered, swirling a glass of bourbon. “Come to join us, Sheriff? Or just makin’ sure your dago friends sleep well tonight?”

Hollis ignored the jab, settling into the chair across from him. He leaned back slow, spurs clinking against the leg of the table. His voice was even, measured, the kind of tone that could pass for friendly until you listened close.

“You stirred up a hornet’s nest the other night, Calvin,” Hollis said. “Set half the valley talkin’. The Sielis got friends in this town. Quiet ones, sure, but friends all the same. They hire men when no one else will. They donate at church. They line pockets. Mine included.”

Rourke’s jaw tightened. “And that makes ‘em untouchable? Sheriff, we’re talkin’ about wops here. Garlic-stinkin’, pope-worshippin’ wops breakin’ bread with niggers. That ain’t American. They need to learn their place. And that Marco? He broke into my house. Put a gun to my chest.”

Hollis’s eyes flicked toward him, steady as a gun barrel. “Maybe he did. And maybe you oughta think on why. Man don’t risk his neck like that unless he’s been pushed to the wall. You keep pressin’, you’re gonna find out just how far those people’ll go.”

Rourke slammed his glass down, bourbon splashing. “We are the law in this county, Sheriff! We set the order. You think I’m gonna let some dago farmer make a fool of me?”

The Sheriff leaned forward, his shadow falling across the table. His voice dropped to a gravelly whisper.

“You ain’t the law. I am. And here’s me tellin’ you: it ain’t worth it. You touch the Sielis again, you’ll find your own friends dryin’ up. Judges, bankers, even the newspapermen — they ain’t all with you. Some of ‘em like their wine too much to see the vines burn.”

For a long moment, the two men locked eyes. Rourke’s knuckles whitened around his glass, but he didn’t speak.

Finally Hollis stood, adjusting his hat. “My advice? Let it lie. Plenty of other folk to scare in this county. Leave the Sielis be.”

Rourke’s voice was low, bitter. “This ain’t over.”

But it was. At least for now.

From that night forward, the Klan left the Sielis alone. They never lost the looks — the sideways glances, the spit on the ground when Marco passed — but the torches didn’t return. In Fresno County, reputation carried weight. And the Sielis had earned theirs: Italians, yes, but men who couldn’t be cowed.

---

Epilogue of the Dry Years

When the news finally came in 1933—PROHIBITION REPEALED—the Sielis opened a barrel under the sycamores. The family gathered, glasses raised high.

Antonio growled, “We survived droughts, mobs, railroads, and now this madness.”

Marco smiled. “Because our roots ran deeper than their laws.”

Caterina added softly, “And because we remembered what Papa said—belonging is never free, but it can be earned.”

They drank, not as rebels, not as victors, but as survivors. The vineyard endured, ready for another century of storms.

 Repeal and Renewal

Epigraph: Fresno Bee (Dec. 5, 1933) — “AMENDMENT RATIFIED: PROHIBITION ENDS — AMERICA LIFTS A GLASS”

---

A Vineyard Awakens

The repeal of Prohibition came like rain on parched soil. For thirteen years, the vineyard had survived in shadows—sacramental contracts with parishes, whispered grape brick sales, nights spent fearing a knock from federal agents. Now the chains were off.

Marco stood on the porch with the newspaper in his hand, reading the headline aloud. “America lifts a glass,” he murmured, half in disbelief.

Antonio snatched it, scanning the print with a snort. “They call it celebration. I call it confession—thirteen years of lies, and now they want to drink like nothing happened.”

Caterina set down her ledger and smiled thinly. “So we give them something worth confessing over.”

That night, lanterns glowed under the sycamores. Barrels rolled from the barn, their iron hoops clanging like bells. Neighbors crowded the yard—Italians, Irish, Mexicans, even Anglos who once muttered “garlic eaters” now raised cups freely.

Seamus struck his fiddle, the bow flying, filling the night with reels and arias. Antonio raised a jug, voice booming: “To freedom!”

Marco tempered him, lifting his glass steady. “To roots,” he said. “Roots that endured thirteen dry years.”

Caterina raised hers last. “And to customers who finally pay in daylight.”

The crowd laughed, drank, and for a moment the vineyard felt untouchable.

---

Lean Years

But repeal did not erase the Depression. By 1935, Fresno’s streets bore soup lines, and men with hollow eyes drifted in search of work. The co-op collapsed under unpaid debts. Banks foreclosed on farms with no more ceremony than a clerk’s stamp.

In the barn, Marco spread ledgers across a barrel, tapping the columns. “Our sales rise, but half our buyers pay late—or not at all.”

Antonio paced. “Then we demand payment.”

Marco shook his head. “A tavernkeeper with no coin cannot invent it.”

Caterina, who had spent her days tallying harvest wages, spoke up. “Then we must tighten. Fewer hands. More work from family.”

Antonio slammed his palm on the barrel. “Family already bleeds in these rows! What more do you want—our bones?”

The silence was heavy until Pietro, Rosa’s son, spoke from the shadows. Barely twenty, shoulders broad but face still boyish, he stepped forward. “What if we sell bottles, not just barrels? A man may not afford a cask, but he can spare a nickel for a bottle.”

Antonio scoffed. “Wine in bottles is for the French—or San Francisco dandies.”

Marco considered, eyes narrowing. “Maybe the boy is right. Times change. We must change with them.”

Caterina gave a small smile. “Spoken like someone carrying more than ledgers. Pietro sees not just vines—but markets.”

Antonio grumbled, but said nothing more.

---

A New Spirit

Pietro threw himself into the work. He designed crude paper labels—Sieli Vineyards, Fresno, California—and pasted them on bottles by hand. At first, merchants laughed. “Your jug red, dressed for church,” one sneered. But when families bought the bottles for Sunday supper, demand grew.

Lucia, Caterina’s daughter, helped keep track. She had inherited her aunt’s sharp mind and her mother’s stubbornness. “We must keep the books clean,” she told Pietro one evening. “If we don’t, the co-op will claim more than its share.”

He grinned. “Always numbers with you. I prefer names.”

“And I prefer that those names don’t end up bankrupt,” she shot back, though her cheeks flushed.

Antonio teased from across the room. “Numbers and names—you’ll make a good pair, if the vines don’t kill you first.”

They both laughed nervously, though neither denied it.

---

Clouds of War

By 1939, the papers screamed of Europe aflame. GERMANY INVADES POLAND. FRANCE FALLS. Fresno read the headlines in cafes and churchyards, muttering about another faraway war.

At the vineyard table, Pietro tapped the page. “We cannot stay out forever. The world will drag America in.”

Antonio waved a hand. “Let them fight their own battles. We bled enough building these vines.”

But Marco looked long at his nephew. “And if the world demands you fight?”

Pietro met his gaze steadily. “Then I will fight. For America. For here. For this.” He gestured to the rows outside. “So that our name is never taken by another storm.”

---

Wartime Fresno

When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, the valley erupted in fear and fury. Pietro enlisted the next week. At his farewell dinner under the sycamores, Antonio clasped him in a fierce embrace. “Come back with both arms and both legs. The vines will wait.”

Lucia pressed a rosary into his hand. “Write us. Even one word.”

He smiled softly. “The word will be home.”

As Pietro marched off to war, the vineyard turned into a place of waiting. Women and elders worked the rows. Caterina organized shifts like a general, barking orders, her skirts catching dust. Seamus, too old for service, played at rallies raising funds for the Red Cross.

But suspicion gnawed. Italians were labeled “enemy aliens.” Posters warned of saboteurs. Some neighbors looked sideways at the Sielis, as if Mussolini himself hid in their barn.

One afternoon, Marco returned from town, face pale. “They want Italian families to register. Some on the coast are losing land.”

Antonio spat. “We fought mobs for this land. We bled in ditches. Let them try.”

Caterina’s voice steadied them. “We endured worse. We endure again—with silence, with dignity, with roots.”

---

Letters from Afar

Pietro’s letters came like drops in a drought—rare, precious.

The vines here are dust. Pray for rain in Italy.

I dream of the rows. Tell Uncle Antonio not to curse the mules too much without me.

One letter, longer than the rest, came folded and stained. I fight for America, but I fight also for the vineyard. If we win, it will be more than land that survives. It will be our name. Do not let it fade before I return.

Lucia wept reading it aloud. Marco folded it carefully, setting it in the family Bible.

---

The End of War

In 1945, Fresno rang with church bells and whistles. Victory. Pietro returned leaner, eyes older, but alive. The family feasted, barrels tapped, music spilling across the vineyard.

Antonio gripped his nephew’s shoulders. “You kept your word.”

Lucia laughed through tears. “And our name.”

Pietro raised a glass of the first post-war vintage. “To Giuseppe,” he said, his voice strong. “To roots deeper than storms, wars, or prejudice. To the Sieli vineyard—may it never dry.”

The family echoed, glasses raised high. Outside, the vines whispered in the wind, roots sunk deeper than ever, carrying memory into the future.

 Thanksgiving, 1945

The vineyard had never looked so peaceful. The vines stood bare but proud, their work done for the year, the earth resting under the pale gold of late November. Inside the farmhouse, the smell of roasted turkey mingled with garlic, sage, and red wine. It was the first Thanksgiving with Pietro home.

The long table gleamed beneath a lace runner, crowded with abundance: a golden-brown turkey surrounded by rosemary sprigs, bowls of mashed potatoes glistening with butter, yams dusted with cinnamon, and cream corn beside bright yellow cobs still steaming from the pot. In between the American dishes were the family’s traditions—stuffed shells bubbling with ricotta and mozzarella, a deep platter of lasagna layered with sauce and love, and loaves of crusty Italian bread waiting to be torn by hand.

Lucía moved quickly, ladling gravy, refilling glasses, her rosary peeking from her apron pocket.

Pietro sat at the head of the table, leaner now, the light in his eyes dimmed by what he had seen. When Rosa passed him the bread, his hand trembled slightly before he steadied it with a faint smile. “In Italy,” he said, “we used to thank God for the harvest. Now I thank Him for making it home.”

The family murmured amen together, but when the plates were cleared and coffee poured, the talk turned to the war.

“It’s true then?” Antonio asked quietly. “The camps?”

Pietro nodded, staring into his cup. “Worse than anything I could tell you. Piles of shoes, of glasses, of hair. People burned because of who they were.” He swallowed hard. “They killed the Jews, the Romani, the sick. Entire families.”

Lucía crossed herself. “Madness. How could men do such things?”

Frank sighed. “It is what happens when the world forgets Christ. The Jews rejected Him long ago, and yet…” He shook his head. “Even they did not deserve this.”

Across the table, Rosa frowned. “Papa, don’t say that. The Church teaches us that all are children of God.”

Frank hesitated, embarrassed. “Of course, of course. But you cannot deny who owns the banks in Europe. Even before Mussolini—”

“Stop,” Pietro said, more sharply than he meant to. The room fell silent. “I saw what hate like that becomes. Words like those become bullets. You think it starts with soldiers? No. It starts at tables like this, with talk that sounds harmless.”

Antonio leaned back in his chair. “He’s right,” he said. “We’ve all heard the stories, the whispers. But look what came of them. Never again.”

For a moment, the only sound was the ticking of the old clock on the wall. Outside, a soft wind stirred the vineyard rows, bare but alive. Rosa reached across the table, taking Pietro’s hand. “Then we promise,” she said quietly. “Not in this house. Not in this family.”

Pietro nodded. “That’s the only victory that matters.”

The family bowed their heads, not to say grace, but to remember.

Book II: 

1950-2025

__________________________________________________________________________

Roots and Branches 

Epigraph: Life Magazine (July 4, 1954) — “CALIFORNIA WINE: A NEW AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY”

---

The Suburban Dream

By the 1950s, Fresno was unrecognizable. Where dusty lots had once stood, subdivisions now bloomed: identical houses with white fences, Buicks in the driveways, radios humming Frank Sinatra. The Sieli vineyard, once derided as foreign, had become a respectable business.

At Sunday dinner, Pietro carved a roast while his son Michael bragged about his football team. “Coach says I might make State,” he said, chin high. “Not bad for a dago, eh?”

Antonio slammed his fork down. “Never use that word—not even in jest!”

Michael shrugged. “No one calls me that anymore, Zio. They call me Mike. Just Mike.”

Lucia’s eyes narrowed. “And what will you tell your children, Mike? That their name was too heavy to carry?”

Michael shifted, uncomfortable. “It’s easier this way. We fit in.”

Antonio muttered darkly, “Fit in? Like a sheep fits in before the butcher.”

---

Losing the Old Tongue

By then, the Italian tongue had nearly vanished from the house. When Antonio shouted instructions in dialect, the grandchildren giggled. “Say it again, Nonno—it sounds funny.”

One night, Caterina asked Pietro softly, “Why not teach them? Why not keep the language alive?”

Pietro sighed. “Because the world doesn’t want it. Teachers scold them for accents. Neighbors mock. I want my children to be American without apology.”

Antonio’s eyes burned. “We bled for that language! For that name!”

Pietro’s jaw clenched. “And now they call us White. They open their banks, shake our hands. I will not put my children back in the gutter for pride.”

The old man and the middle-aged son stared at each other, the silence a battlefield.

---

A Bitter Barbecue

In 1962, the family gathered for a summer barbecue. The vineyard was lush, the rows heavy with grapes. Neighbors came—Italians, Germans, Anglos—sharing beer and sausages under the sycamores.

Frank, Pietro’s nephew, leaned on the fence with a bottle in hand. “Fresno’s crawling with Mexicans now,” he muttered to a group of young men. “Lazy. Always drunk. Not like us. We’re respectable.”

Pietro, overhearing, stormed over. “Frank! Enough!”

Frank shrugged, smirking. “I’m only saying what everyone knows.”

Pietro’s voice rose. “Do you forget? Do you forget? Signs in saloons: No Dagos Allowed. Do you forget spit in our faces? Do you forget our Nonno Giuseppe, hiding from mobs? And now you throw the same words at men who sweat in the same fields?”

The yard went quiet. Children stared. Antonio, now frail but still fierce, struggled to his feet. “Our roots were watered with insult. And you would pass that water on?”

Frank’s smile faltered, but he did not apologize.

Later, Lucia told Pietro, “Roots twist. Some grow to light. Some toward rot.”

Christmas with the Television

It was Christmas Eve of 1952, and the Sieli farmhouse glowed like an ember in the cold valley fog. Pietro had strung colored bulbs along the porch, and Lucía’s kitchen was a symphony of clatter and spice — lasagna bubbling in the oven, meatballs simmering in sauce, loaves of Italian bread cooling on the counter beside bowls of olives and tossed greens. The children chased each other through the hallway until their Nonna shouted for them to sit still or be sent to midnight Mass early.

In the corner of the parlor, a tall box wrapped in red paper waited. When Pietro gave the nod, his eldest son tore it open and froze. “A television!” he shouted. The family gasped — the first in their valley neighborhood to own one. Pietro grinned as he plugged it in and adjusted the antenna. The screen flickered, hummed, and finally came to life in black and white. A man in a suit welcomed them to The Colgate Comedy Hour. The family clapped like parishioners witnessing a small miracle.

Lucía crossed herself. “Madonna mia,” she whispered, laughing. “People, inside a box.”

Cousin Aldo leaned back, skeptical. “A fad,” he declared. “Give it a year, and everyone will go back to their radios.”

The Space Race and the Moon

By the late 1950s, a new kind of competition gripped the world—not for land or gold, but for the heavens. Radios in Fresno crackled with talk of Sputnik, of rockets roaring over deserts and oceans. The Sielis listened from their farmhouse kitchen, the family gathered around a small black-and-white television as grainy images of astronauts in silver suits filled the screen. When President Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon, Dominic, then barely a teenager, looked up at his father and said, “Do you think he really can?” His father smiled, wiping his hands on a rag. “If Americans can make vines grow in dust, they can plant a flag on the moon.”

On July 20, 1969, the vineyard was silent except for the faint hum of the TV in the front room. The Sielis, like millions of others, watched Neil Armstrong step onto the lunar surface. “That’s one small step for man…” crackled through the static. Michael whispered, almost in awe, “Nonno would’ve loved this.” Rosa nodded, her eyes wet. “He dreamed of America reaching heaven. Maybe tonight, we did.” Outside, the stars over Fresno seemed closer than they ever had before.

---

Civil Rights and Counterculture

Television flickered in the farmhouse living room: Martin Luther King Jr. thundering, “I have a dream…”

The older children watched silently. Some clapped. Others rolled their eyes.

Michael muttered, “He’s a Communist. They all are. Stirring trouble.”

Lucia spun on him. “Communist? So was every priest who fed the poor. So was every miner who asked for bread instead of stone. Do not repeat the words of men who spat on us.”

Michael snapped back, “We’re not them anymore. We worked, we built, we earned. If those people want better, let them work harder.”

Antonio rasped from his chair, voice shaking with anger. “That’s the same lie the Anglos told us! That we were lazy, papist, unworthy! You disgrace your name, boy!”

But Michael left the room, muttering about “agitators” and “outside trouble.”

---

A Split in the Family

By the mid-1960s, the rift was clear.

• The elders—Antonio, Caterina, and a few cousins who remembered mobs and lynching rumors—stood with the Civil Rights marchers, murmured support for César Chávez and the farmworker strikes.

• The younger generation—Mike, Frank, and their friends—wore pressed suits, joined Rotary Clubs, talked of border fences, and boasted they were now “good Americans.”

At one heated supper, Frank declared, “We need a wall. Too many illegals crawling through. They steal jobs.”

Pietro slammed his glass down. “Jobs? They pick our grapes! They bleed in the heat! You would starve without them.”

Michael shook his head. “We should deport them all. Make America strong again.”

Antonio whispered hoarsely, “This is what happens when vines forget their roots. They wither, no matter how green they look.”

The Day the World Stopped

The vineyard was quiet on that November afternoon in 1963. The harvest was done, the barrels sealed, and the air still smelled faintly of crushed grapes. Dominic was tuning the radio in the barn when the announcer’s voice cracked through the static: “President John F. Kennedy has been shot in Dallas, Texas…”

By the time Michael ran in, the world had changed. The two brothers stood side by side as the reports came faster—Parkland Hospital, the motorcade, the book depository. When the final words fell—the president is dead—Dominic turned off the radio and for a long time, no one spoke.

That evening the family gathered in the kitchen, faces lit by the small television set’s cold glow. The newscaster’s voice trembled as he replayed the day’s images: Jackie’s pink suit, the motorcade frozen in time. Even the children sat still, the sound of the house amplified by the absence of conversation.

Rosa wept quietly into her apron. “He was young,” she said. “Like America was young again when he spoke.”

Michael, who had never voted for a Democrat in his life, pressed his palm flat on the table and stared at the grain. “Didn’t matter whether you agreed with him,” he said at last. “He made you believe we could still do great things.”

Outside, the flag over the vineyard hung at half-mast, motionless in the still air. The family stayed together around the table, hands folded or clasped, each in their own way offering a small prayer or vow. Dominic whispered to his brother in the doorway, “You think America will ever be the same?”

Michael did not look up. “No,” he said softly. “But maybe that’s how we start to grow again.”

---

 Judgment and Division

Epigraph: Time Magazine (June 12, 1976) — “CALIFORNIA BEATS FRANCE: NAPA WINES TAKE THE PRIZE IN PARIS”

---

The Global Stage

By the 1970s, California wine was no longer a curiosity—it was a global force. When Napa vintages triumphed over French wines at the “Judgment of Paris” in 1976, the world took notice.

In Fresno, the Sieli vineyard rode the wave. Bottles with crisp labels—Siely Vineyards—sold in supermarkets from San Diego to Chicago. Pietro’s children spoke of marketing campaigns and export markets.

But Marco’s warning echoed: “Success can sour faster than grapes in the sun.”

---

Protest in the Fields

That same year, César Chávez and the United Farm Workers marched through the valley, demanding contracts, dignity, water breaks. Pickets lined vineyards. The Sieli workers—Mexican, Filipino, and Chicano—looked nervously to their employers.

At a family meeting, Pietro addressed it plainly. “If they strike, we must hear them. We know too well the sting of hunger.”

Frank scoffed. “You’ll side with agitators? With Communists? Don’t be fooled, Zio—they want to bleed us dry.”

Michael chimed in, “If we give in, they’ll demand more. First wages, then citizenship, then our land. This is America—our America.”

Antonio, near ninety now, rasped from his chair: “Once, they said the same of us. And you call yourself American while you parrot their hate? Shame.”

The younger cousins rolled their eyes. But Lucia, calm and firm, looked at them. “If you crush these workers, you crush your own history.”

---

The Vineyard Divided

When strikers passed the Sieli rows carrying signs—Huelga! Dignidad!—the family split in their response. Pietro allowed workers to march, even brought them bread and water.

Frank refused, muttering, “This is our land, not theirs.”

One night, at dinner, Michael raised a glass. “To border walls. To strong fences. To America for Americans.”

Lucia slammed her fork down. “And who decides who is American? You, Mike? Or the Anglos who once told us to go back to Italy?”

The table erupted—shouts, fists on wood, Caterina weeping quietly at the end.

---

The Younger Light

But not all the young followed Mike and Frank. Pietro’s granddaughter Sofia, barely fifteen, stood up in the middle of one argument.

“I don’t care what you say,” she cried. “I marched with my friends in Fresno. I carried a sign. The police tried to push us back, but we sang. And you know what song we sang? We Shall Overcome.”

The table fell silent. Even Antonio’s eyes glistened.

Sofia’s voice shook but held. “You taught me our Nonno was spat on, mocked, told he didn’t belong. And now you do the same? If that’s what it means to be American, then I don’t want it.”

Caterina rose, put her arm around the girl, and whispered, “Do not be ashamed. Roots find light, even when branches rot.”

---

Epilogue: Judgment of Paris, Judgment at Home

When the news came that California had bested France, Pietro toasted quietly. “The world sees us now,” he said. “But if we lose our soul, what will they really see?”

Antonio, frail but smiling faintly, raised his glass. “The vine endures. But only if we remember the soil we came from.”

The vineyard stretched under the stars, rooted deep in soil watered by struggle, pride, shame, and hope. Some branches bent toward darkness, others toward light. The harvest to come would reveal which bore sweeter fruit.

Two Weddings and a War (Early 1970s)

The vines stood clean and trimmed that winter, the air heavy with fog and diesel smoke. The Sieli brothers — Dominic and Michael — were men now, running the ranch their grandfather had carved from dust. They’d been raised to believe the world ran on work, pride, and keeping what was yours.

They didn’t see much reason to change that.

The valley around them was changing, though. Migrant workers were arriving in greater numbers. Spanish filled the fields. New families were moving into neighborhoods once closed off. The Sielis nodded politely at their laborers but never sat at the same tables.

To Dominic and Michael, it wasn’t hate — just the way things were.

---

Dominic’s Wedding — Winter

Dominic married first, that December. His bride, Carolyn D’Amato, came from another old Italian-American family out of Hanford — her father in construction, her mother known for running the parish ladies’ guild with an iron hand.

The wedding was at St. Alphonsus, the same church where Pietro used to kneel during Lent. It smelled of candle wax, old hymn books, and cold stone. Dominic stood straight beside Carolyn at the altar, his jaw set, his pride burning like the incense.

Michael served as best man, hair slicked, tie crooked, his smile too wide. After the vows, the whole family gathered in the parish hall. There were paper streamers in green, white, and red, and the accordion player Pietro loved wheezed through “That’s Amore” while kids ran between the tables.

When the Mexican crews passed by the churchyard on their way home from the fields, nobody invited them in. The unspoken divide between those who owned the land and those who worked it was as solid as the church walls themselves.

Dominic didn’t notice. Carolyn didn’t either. The valley kept its habits, and the Sielis kept theirs.

---

Michael’s Wedding — Summer

Michael married six months later, in July, beneath a hard blue sky that shimmered with heat. His bride, Helena Moretti, came from a family that owned a grocery in town. Her father had served in Korea, her mother in the auxiliary. They liked Michael because he was clean-cut, hardworking, and talked about America like it was a sacred idea.

The ceremony was held right on the vineyard grounds, under white tents and strings of paper lanterns. The vines were green and high, thick with promise. Michael wore his father’s cufflinks and a confident grin that caught sunlight like glass.

Dominic gave a toast, clinking his glass.
“To my brother,” he said, voice loud enough to carry across the fields. “To family. To keeping our land ours and our blood strong.”

People clapped. Helena smiled, though her expression faltered just for a moment — enough for Sofia, who sat with Pietro at the head table, to notice.

The band played Sinatra until dusk. The men drank. The women laughed. And when the last guests left, Michael and Helena stood by the rows, their fingers laced together. He looked out over the land as if he owned more than acreage — as if he owned the whole damn country.

---

“We Gotta Fight the Commies”

By autumn, the war was no longer background noise on the evening news — it was everywhere. Boys from the valley were coming home in caskets. Others were coming home changed.

Dominic figured Michael would avoid the draft — he had the vineyard, a wife, a future. But Michael had other plans.

He stood in the kitchen one morning, rolling up the enlistment papers he’d just signed.
“I’m joining up,” he said.

Dominic looked up from his coffee. “You what?”

“I enlisted,” Michael repeated, grinning. “Army. Infantry. Maybe airborne if they’ll have me.”

Dominic slammed his cup down. “Are you out of your damn mind? You’ve got a wife, land, everything—”

Michael cut him off. “We gotta fight the Commies, Dom. You don’t sit back while the world burns. You stand up. You do your part.”

“You sound like Pop.”

“Good,” Michael said. “He raised us right.”

Dominic shook his head. “You’re fighting a war nobody understands, for people who don’t care about this place.”

Michael smirked. “Maybe not. But I care. And I’ll be damned if I sit here pretending a man’s hands only belong on pruning shears.”

Helena came in from the porch then, eyes red. She didn’t argue. She’d already tried.

---

Farewell

On the morning he left, the fog was thick enough to hide the road. Dominic drove him to the bus depot in Fresno, neither of them speaking much along the way. Helena sat beside Michael, clutching his hand in silence.

At the station, Michael straightened his uniform, the creases perfect, his boots polished until they shone. Dominic stood with his hands jammed in his pockets, jaw tight.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” Dominic said.

Michael grinned. “Don’t worry, little brother. I’ll come back with stories.”

“You better,” Dominic muttered. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”

They hugged — brief, hard, like men who didn’t know how to say the other things.

When the bus pulled away, Helena waved through her tears. Dominic watched the taillights fade into the fog, the sound of the engine lingering long after the bus was gone.

---

The Land Waits

Back home, Dominic walked the vineyard rows alone. Helena moved into her parents’ house, waiting on letters that came once a month. Carolyn kept to herself, tired of hearing the war on the radio.

Dominic worked harder than ever, muttering to himself as he pruned and sprayed. He wasn’t angry at Michael — not exactly. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that his brother’s pride had always been bigger than the land could hold.

When the first letter came, Michael wrote about the jungle heat, the smell of rain and gun oil, and how the locals reminded him of the pickers back home — “same sunburnt faces, same grit.” Dominic read that line twice, unsure if it was humility or the same blindness they’d both inherited.

The war went on. The vines grew. The land waited.

And somewhere half a world away, Michael Sieli fought for a flag he believed in with the same stubborn heart that had kept their family’s soil alive through a century of struggle.

---

Closing Line

In the summer nights after he left, Dominic sometimes stood alone on the dirt road and looked east, where the stars dipped low over the valley. He’d whisper the same words their grandfather once said before every storm:

“Let the land remember us right.”

Fire and Flags

(Late 1970s – 1980s)

By the time the Vietnam War ended, the vineyard’s rows had seen three generations come and go. The soil still held its patience, but the nation’s spirit was worn thin. News came not from letters or telegraphs now, but from the television that glowed in the corner of the farmhouse kitchen, the kind of light that made even supper look uncertain.

Michael Sieli, now in his late twenties, had come home different. He had left the rows for the rice paddies of Southeast Asia—trading the hum of cicadas for the roar of helicopters, the smell of grapes for smoke and diesel.

At night, the family would sometimes hear him wake shouting, his voice hoarse with ghosts he couldn’t name. During the day, he’d lose himself in work—mending fences, fixing irrigation lines, pruning vines until his hands bled.

“Michael, you’ve been at that all day,” Rosa said once, bringing him water.

He wiped the sweat from his neck. “I can’t sit still,” he said simply. “Not yet.”

Helena watched from the porch that afternoon, arms folded around her waist as if trying to hold everything together that the war had left loose. She’d grown quieter since his return—not weak, just carrying something she couldn’t name. Some nights she’d sit up with him when the dreams came. She never asked about what he saw. She just put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, “You’re home. You’re here.”

---

The television droned on from the kitchen, the evening news filled with protests—flags burning, chants echoing across the country. One night, when a reporter described returning soldiers as “broken and brutalized,” Michael slammed his fist against the table so hard the coffee cups rattled.

“They’re callin’ those boys killers,” he muttered, staring at the screen. “Kids who just did what they were told. My buddy’s son came home last week—somebody spit on him in San Francisco. Called him a baby killer.”

Dominic looked up from the newspaper. “I heard the same. Protesters at the airport. Throwin’ things. Yellin’ at the soldiers. You serve your country, and that’s your welcome home.”

Carolyn, standing by the stove, crossed her arms. “It’s disgraceful. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

Rosa sighed softly, drying a plate. “People are tired of war, Michael. They’ve lost sons too.”

Michael’s eyes flared. “So did we! So did half the town! But you don’t turn your back on the ones who made it home. You say thank you, not shame on you.”

Helena reached for his hand across the table, squeezing gently. “You’re not them, Mikey. Don’t let their words make you something you’re not.”

The room fell quiet. The only sound was the faint whir of the ceiling fan and the crickets outside. The vineyard shimmered in the heat—still working, still giving, while the world seemed to forget how to do either.

---

When he wasn’t working, Michael sometimes drove his pickup out past the canal and parked by the edge of the property. He’d sit there watching the sunset burn through the smog and whisper the names of the men who didn’t come back. Then, as the light faded, he’d turn the key and drive home in silence.

Helena never went with him on those drives. She let him have that quiet. She knew the vineyard couldn’t fix what the war had taken, but it was the only place he still trusted to hold the weight of his silence.

---

Years passed, and the Sieli brothers carried their bitterness into middle age. By the 1980s, the ranch had new tractors, new barrels, and a flag that caught every valley wind. Michael and Dominic were both in their mid-thirties now—calloused, confident, and sure of what they believed.

“Reagan’s got it right,” Dominic said one morning, folding the Fresno Bee across his knee. “Strong America. Strong borders. None of this hand-wringing and guilt.”

Michael nodded. “A man ought to be proud of his country again. We worked for what we’ve got. Nobody handed it to us.”

Sofia, barely a teenager, looked up from her cereal. “But isn’t he cutting programs that help poor people? And what about the nukes—doesn’t everyone say he might start another war?”

Michael half-smiled, shaking his head. “You’ll understand when you’re older. The world’s a rough place. Sometimes strength keeps the peace better than kindness.”

Rosa’s voice came from the doorway, gentle but firm. “Strength and kindness don’t have to be enemies, Michael. Not if a man remembers where he came from.”

Helena, seated across from Sofia, added quietly, “Sometimes strength isn’t how loud you yell, it’s what you choose to hold together.”

Carolyn, hands on her hips, didn’t hide her approval. “I like a president who doesn’t apologize for loving his country.”

Michael looked at Helena for a long moment, the fire in his eyes dimming to something thoughtful. “Maybe,” he said at last. “But sometimes I think the only thing this country respects anymore is who yells the loudest.”

Dominic raised his coffee cup in mock salute. “Then we’ve been training for that our whole lives.”

They laughed, but the laughter felt different now—older, heavier, carrying the sound of men and women who had seen America change too many times to know if it was for better or worse.

Outside, the flag cracked in the morning breeze—red, white, and blue over a vineyard whose roots ran deeper than any president’s promise.

And in the fields, as Michael leaned on his shovel, the hum of the tractor mixed with something quieter—a prayer that the next generation would never have to carry the kind of memories that made a man look strong on the outside, but hollow on the inside.

---

🌍 The World Unfolds

The Berlin Wall fell on television, piece by piece, in a shower of stone and memory. The sound of hammers and cheering crowds poured through the kitchen speakers of the Sieli ranch house, where three generations had gathered for dinner.

Sofia, just home from her first semester at Fresno State, sat between her father Dominic and her Uncle Michael. Maria, Dominic’s second wife, stirred sauce on the stove, the scent of basil and wine rising with the broadcast. At the end of the table sat Rosa—ninety-two, wrapped in her shawl, her once-dark hair now silver as olive leaves. Her hands trembled, but her eyes stayed sharp.

“Listen to them,” Rosa murmured in Italian. “The sound of chains breaking.”

On the screen, a German boy climbed the wall and waved a small flag. The crowd below passed him flowers. Reporters shouted over the din about freedom, unity, a new world.

Dominic leaned forward, his elbows on the table, eyes bright. “So it’s really over,” he said. “Forty years of fear, and it ends with bricks coming down.”

Michael nodded, swirling the Chianti in his glass. Helena sat next to him, quietly touching the rim of her wineglass with her finger. She’d never quite learned to love the noise of war talk, but she’d stayed through all of it. “All those drills in school,” Michael said. “Hiding under desks in case the Soviets dropped the bomb. And for what? Turns out, they just got tired.”

Anthony, Dominic’s teenage son, looked up from his plate. “So we won the Cold War?”

Michael smiled. “We didn’t win, kid. The world just exhaled.”

Rosa chuckled softly. “And maybe God got tired of listening to fools threaten to burn His garden.”

Sofia reached for the TV remote, lowering the volume as the cameras followed East Berliners crossing into West Berlin. “Nonno would’ve loved this,” she said. “He always said borders are made by frightened men, not by the land itself.”

Maria turned from the stove, wiping her hands. “Your grandfather lived through men who built walls with words, not bricks—‘dago,’ ‘papist,’ ‘foreigner.’ He’d be proud the world’s tearing one down for once.”

Dominic leaned back, looking around the table. “You know, when I was a boy, all we heard was the world might end any day. Now it feels like we might actually live long enough to see what comes next.”

Michael raised his glass. Helena raised hers, their fingers brushing. “To peace,” he said.

Anthony raised his soda. Sofia clinked her wineglass to his. “To peace,” they echoed.

That winter, the Sieli Vineyard bottled a new blend. They called it Freedom Vintage 1990. The label bore the crest of the family and a line from Giuseppe’s old diary, words written more than a century earlier when the world was still divided by fences and fear:

“A field well-tended survives any border.”

As the corks popped and the glasses filled, Rosa smiled faintly from her chair by the fire. “The soil remembers,” she whispered. “And so do we.”

---

 Global Grapes, Global Faultlines

Epigraph: Los Angeles Times (Nov. 9, 1994) — “VOTERS APPROVE PROPOSITION 187: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS BARRED FROM PUBLIC SERVICES”

A Vineyard for Tourists

By the late 1980s, the San Joaquin Valley was changing. Vineyards and farms that had endured for generations were sold off to corporations and developers. Rows of grapes and peaches gave way to asphalt and tract homes with tidy lawns and cul-de-sacs named after the families whose fields they replaced.

The Sielis felt the sting of it every time they passed a neighbor’s land now paved with driveways and garages. For years, letters arrived from developers with glossy brochures and six-figure offers. At church and in town, other families quietly admitted they had taken the money and moved on. The pressure to sell was suffocating, and it never fully disappeared.

To survive, the Sielis had to do more than farm. They began experimenting with something new: a small tasting room, open on weekends. A side shed was converted into a shop for homemade olive oil, jars of pickled vegetables, and bottles of wine labeled with the family crest. School groups and church clubs were invited to tour the rows and picnic under the sycamores. These efforts didn’t erase the financial strain, but they bought the family time. They also planted the seeds of what would become, decades later, a full-fledged destination.

Sieli Vineyards—rebranded with a “y” to seem sleeker—now boasted a modest tasting room. Glass walls looked out over the vines. Brochures told a glossy version of the family story: From immigrant hardship to American success.

Sofia, then in her thirties, winced when she read it. “They cut the struggle out,” she told her uncle Pietro one afternoon as they walked the rows.

Her uncle Michael, still managing sales, overheard. “People don’t want struggle. They want a story with a happy ending. They want to drink pride, not pain.”

Sofia shot back, “Then we sell lies.”

Michael shrugged. “Lies that pay the bills.”

The tasting room was barely out of its first successful season when the letter arrived. Thick, cream-colored, embossed with a gold crest. Sofia carried it to the porch where Dominic leaned against the railing, whiskey glass in hand, watching the sun bleed into the horizon.

“It’s from Golden Fields Partners,” she said.

Dominic didn’t turn. “Who the hell are they?”

“Developers. Napa money.”

He tore the envelope open, lips pressed thin. Purchase offer. Above market value. Legacy partnership. Seamless transition.

“They’re not buying the land,” Dominic muttered. “They’re buying us.”

Sofia crossed her arms. “They want the name. Sieli Vineyards.”

Dominic drained the last of his drink and set the glass down hard. “Then they can go to hell.”

---

---

---

---

“FAMILY ESTATE ERASED AFTER TAKEOVER.”
“DEVELOPER UNDER INVESTIGATION.”

---

---

---

Golden Fields was waiting.
And so were the Sielis.

She came a week later. Not a man in a suit, but Miranda Carmichael — all tailored elegance and slow, confident movements. She stepped out of a deep green Jaguar in polished black heels, the kind no one wore on a vineyard unless they meant to be noticed. Her hair caught the late light like spun gold.

“Mr. Sieli,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m Miranda Carmichael, acquisitions director for Golden Fields Partners. I think we can help each other.”

Dominic shook her hand before he could stop himself. Warm. Smooth. Controlled.

“This vineyard’s not for sale,” he said flatly.

She smiled — not the shark grin of a lawyer, but something softer. “That’s what everyone says. At first.”

Michael appeared on the steps, arms crossed. “Whatever she’s offering, we’re not interested.”

Miranda’s eyes flicked briefly toward him, then back to Dominic. “Then maybe we should talk when it’s just the two of us.”

---

And they did.

At first Dominic told himself it was strategy — keep your enemies close. But Miranda wasn’t like the developers he’d imagined. She didn’t push contracts on day one. She asked questions about his father. Listened to stories about the old vines. She walked barefoot through the rows one afternoon, holding her heels in her hand, laughing like someone who belonged.

Dominic found himself talking more than he should have — about the land, about the family, about the years. She was clever, sharp, beautiful, and she had a way of making Dominic feel like the center of the universe — something Carolyn hadn’t done in years. Marriage, routine, the vineyard — it had all hardened into something gray. But Miranda made everything glow again, dangerously.

Carolyn noticed first. She always did. The late-night drives. The scent of unfamiliar perfume on his shirts. The half-excuses about meetings, tastings, strategy.

“Who is she?” she asked one night, voice like a blade wrapped in velvet.

Dominic didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“You think you’re the first man to fall for a woman with a sharp smile and silk on her tongue?” Carolyn hissed. “She doesn’t love you, Dominic. She wants your land.”

He said nothing, because part of him already knew she was right.

---

---

“GOLDEN FIELDS ACCUSED OF FRAUD.”
“DEVELOPER UNDER INVESTIGATION.”

Sofia noticed too. She saw Dominic shaving more. Saw him lingering by the driveway whenever that green Jaguar appeared. Saw the way Miranda touched his arm, just enough to make him lean in.

Late one night, Sofia stepped outside and found Dominic and Miranda in the vines under the floodlights. Their hands weren’t just brushing this time — they were on each other. Miranda’s voice was low, soft, the sound of silk wrapping a blade.

“Partnership,” she whispered against his jaw. “Legacy. This place could be ours, Dominic. Not just yours.”

Sofia froze in the shadows. She didn’t speak. She watched.

A few days later, she set a manila folder on the kitchen table. Dominic came in late, his shirt open at the throat, his collar faintly smelling of Miranda’s perfume. Carolyn sat at the end of the table, her hands clenched into fists. Sofia slid the file toward him.

Inside: lawsuits, property maps, clippings.

“FAMILY ESTATE ERASED AFTER TAKEOVER.”

Dominic frowned, flipping through the pages. “Where’d you get this?”

“Elena’s lawyer friend,” Sofia said. “They’ve done this before. Same script. Different families.”

Carolyn’s voice shook, not from fear but fury. “She’s not in love with you, Dominic. She’s gutting us.”

Dominic’s jaw tightened. “She wouldn’t—”

Michael cut in, cold and blunt. “She already is. Wake up, Dom. You’re screwing the woman who’s trying to burn down your home.”

The storm came fast after that.

The first audit letter. The zoning review. Then sheriff’s deputies walking the rows with flashlights, saying anonymous tips had accused Sieli Vineyards of hiding income and laundering cash.

Miranda’s name wasn’t on any of it — but her company’s fingerprints were everywhere. And still she came around, smiling like the world hadn’t shifted.

One evening Dominic met her by the old vines, the ones their grandfather had planted. The wind was warm. Her hair moved like smoke in the breeze.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Did you know about the audits?”

Miranda didn’t flinch. “This is business. And business moves fast.”

“You used me.”

She sighed — not with guilt, but pity. “I gave you a chance to choose the winning side.”

“You made me think I mattered,” he said.

Her smile softened, but not kindly. “You mattered long enough.”

“Get off my land.”

Her smile faded into something cold. “When they take this place, Dominic, they’ll spell your name right on the sign.”

She turned, heels striking gravel like hammer blows.

After that, Dominic was different. Carolyn threw his clothes into the spare room without a word. Michael didn’t look him in the eye for weeks. Sofia couldn’t decide if she was more furious or heartbroken. The fog Miranda had wrapped around him burned off, leaving something raw behind. Guilt. Fury. Clarity.

“They want a war?” Dominic told Michael one night. “Then they’ll get one.”

The family pulled together—not out of forgiveness, but necessity. Elena contacted lawyers. Sofia organized community tastings and fundraisers. Michael rallied the farmworkers, the neighbors, the old friends who remembered what the Sielis had built when the land was still just dirt and hope.

Miranda disappeared from the vineyard, but Golden Fields did not. They turned up the pressure — legal filings, fake coalitions, newspaper whispers.

Dominic worked the fields like a man trying to wash sin from his hands. But his eyes were clear now. He’d almost given away the vineyard without signing a single paper. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

---

The lawsuits didn’t fade when winter came. They multiplied. Golden Fields wasn’t finished — they were patient, wealthy, and merciless.

But so was the vineyard.

By decade’s end, the land wasn’t just a business. It was a battleground — quiet in harvest, loud in courtrooms, heavy with the ghost of a woman’s perfume and the sting of betrayal.

Dominic stood on the porch one night, staring at the vines. Michael joined him, leaning on the rail.

“She got to me,” Dominic said quietly.

“She won’t again,” Michael answered.

The wind moved through the rows like a memory. Some wars are fought with guns. Some with paper. Some begin with a kiss and end with a storm.

And as the new century crept over the horizon, Miranda Carmichael was gone from the porch but not from the fight.

A Measure of Mercy (circa 1992)

It started like too many nights in the valley—warm air, a radio turned just a little too loud, and a man who knew better easing past the line where good sense ends.

Dominic Sieli had spent the afternoon bottling a run of Zin and tasting through the new Cab with Whitcomb’s buyer. The talk had been easy: yields, acid, weather lies and weather truths. The buyer left happy and Dominic stayed behind, tidying hoses, rinsing tanks, telling himself one last glass would help him “check the finish.” One glass became two. By dusk he’d poured himself a third—more than he’d meant, less than he’d admit.

“Lock up,” Michael called from the office door. “Sofia’s bringing over lasagna. Real dinner, not liquid.”

Dominic grinned and lifted the glass. “Two minutes.”

He made it twenty. When he finally climbed into the pickup, the sky over Fresno was a bruised purple and the rows had gone black and patient. He told himself the road home was muscle memory. He told himself he was fine.

The CHP cruiser appeared in his rearview like a thought he’d been avoiding.

Lights. Siren. A small, red-blue world.

Dominic pulled onto the gravel shoulder, dust blooming. His heart thumped with the certainty that he’d miscalculated—a little—and that it would still somehow work out—like it always did.

The flashlight hit his eyes. “Evening, sir,” the officer said. Young. Calm. “License, registration, proof of insurance.”

“Of course,” Dominic said, voice bright and cooperative, the way you talk to a skittish horse. He fumbled for the glove box; a sheet of tasting notes slid onto the floor. The officer’s nose twitched almost imperceptibly.

“Have you had anything to drink tonight, Mr. Sieli?”

Dominic hesitated a fraction too long. “A taste. I work at a winery.”

The officer nodded toward the truck bed. “Says so.” He tipped his head toward the shoulder. “Would you mind stepping out?”

The air outside was cooler, or his skin was hotter. Gravel crunched under his boots.

“We’re going to do a few tests,” the officer said. “Follow the tip of my pen with your eyes.”

The pen moved left-right. Dominic’s eyes wanted to move with his head. He forced them to comply.

“Walk and turn.” Nine heel-to-toe steps, pivot, nine back. He knew the rows of a vineyard better than his own kitchen. Tonight his feet found the one stray pebble in the state of California. He wobbled, recovered, kept counting as though numbers could save him.

“Blow for me.” The breathalyzer beeped, too cheerful for its job.

The officer studied the readout. “Mr. Sieli, you’re over the legal limit.”

Dominic felt something cold move through him, colder than shame. Colder than fear. He tried for a smile that said We can work this out, and heard his father’s voice from decades ago: A man doesn’t bargain after he’s been dead wrong.

“Turn around, please.”

The cuffs clicked. The sound was small, but it was louder than anything.

---

The booking room smelled like disinfectant and despair. Dominic surrendered his belt, his boots, his dignity. The holding cell was cinderblock, stainless steel, and the particular silence of other men trying not to look at each other. A young guy with gang ink dozed with his head against the wall. An older guy stared at his hands like they’d betrayed him.

Dominic sat. Time went gummy. His mouth tasted like pennies and bad ideas.

Sometime after midnight, the deputy brought a phone. He dialed Michael because there was no one else he could stand to say the words to.

“Yeah?” Michael’s voice was thick with sleep and something else: worry, always nearby like a well bucket.

“It’s me.”

A breath. “Where?”

“The County.”

Another breath. “I’m coming.”

“No,” Dominic said quickly, shame rising like bile. “Don’t wake Sofia. Don’t wake Ma. Just—just come in the morning.”

Michael’s sigh crossed the wire. “You’re a damn fool.”

“I know,” Dominic said, and meant it.

---

They released him near sunrise, conveyor-belt efficient. Michael stood outside in a faded CSU sweatshirt, coffee in a Styrofoam cup, no lecture loaded—yet.

“You hungry?” he asked.

Dominic shook his head. “I’m sick.”

“Good,” Michael said. “Means your conscience still works.”

They drove in silence. The vineyard appeared, green and unimpressed by his catastrophe. On the porch, Rosa sat with her rosary; Teresa moved in the kitchen, the scent of onions sweating in olive oil.

Sofia came down the steps, hair pulled back, eyes swollen. “Are you okay?” Her voice made him want to be twelve and invincible again.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She nodded. “I know.”

Michael set the coffee on the porch rail, then finally spoke. “We’ll talk tonight. Court date first. Work second. Then the lecture.”

Dominic managed a ghost of a smile. “You mean this isn’t the lecture?”

“Oh no,” Michael said. “The lecture has footnotes.”

---

Court was a fluorescent theater where no one laughed. The judge was compact, efficient, bored in the way of people who see the same tragedy in different jackets every day.

“Mr. Sieli,” she said, reading, “.11 blood-alcohol content. First offense. No collision. Cooperative at the scene.” She looked up. “Do you own a winery?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

A flicker—humor? disgust? “The irony writes itself.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” he said again, because anything else would be worse.

She read out the sentence as if reciting a recipe: fines, fee schedule, a three-month DUI class, a MADD panel, community service, license suspension with a restricted license for work. “Next time,” she added, “I won’t be this gentle.”

Outside the courthouse, Dominic leaned against the brick and let the sun burn his neck. Michael handed him a folded piece of paper. “I signed you up for the first available class.”

“I can do it—”

“You will,” Michael said. “And you’ll do it with your mouth shut.”

---

The DUI class was in a beige room that looked like every church hall and union meeting space in Fresno. Coffee in a metal urn. Styrofoam cups. A whiteboard with rules written in Sharpie: No excuses. No cross-talk. Respect the share.

The counselor—Javier, a veteran with kind eyes—opened with statistics and then with stories. The stories landed. A teacher who’d lost her job. A farmhand who hit a pole and missed a child by five feet. A welder who swore he “drove better with a buzz,” who cried when he admitted he hadn’t driven better at all.

When it was Dominic’s turn, he said, “I thought I was fine. I wasn’t.”

A woman across the circle nodded, wet-eyed. “That’s the whole course right there,” she said.

The MADD panel two weeks later was a different kind of quiet. A mother described the sound her phone made when it rang at 2:11 a.m. A nurse talked about shoes left at crash scenes, alone on asphalt like punctuation marks. A father held up his son’s baseball cap and did not speak for a full minute. The silence said more than his voice could have.

Dominic did not try to swallow the guilt. He let it sit with him until it stopped being about his punishment and became about other people’s outcomes.

Community service came hot: July, highway shoulder, a grabber stick in his hand and an orange vest on his back. The Caltrans foreman paired him with a kid whose tags crawled up his neck and a retiree who whistled old ranchera songs. They picked soda cans and fast-food bags and someone’s discarded heel from the same road where Dominic had prayed a cruiser wouldn’t appear.

“You own vines?” the retiree asked at lunch.

“Yeah.”

“Vines forgive,” the old man said, biting into an orange. “Roads don’t.”

That stuck.

---

At home, the consequences kept arriving, petty and permanent. Teresa drove him to the DMV. Sofia took the wheel when a distributor called on the north side. Dominic stood in the barrel room explaining why he couldn’t pour at the tasting for two months because his restricted license didn’t allow it.

At Sunday dinner, the family talked around the subject until Rosa set her fork down. “We will say grace,” she announced, “then we will say the rest.”

They bowed. After Amen, Michael cleared his throat. “What you did was selfish,” he said. “You know it. We all know it. The miracle is you didn’t kill anyone. The lesson is you could have.”

Dominic nodded. “I know.”

Daniel, younger then, spoke up, careful. “We build reputation one bottle at a time. We can lose it with one headline.”

Sofia reached for Dominic’s hand. “We love you. That doesn’t change. But love doesn’t make consequences go away.”

Rosa tapped the table. “He will make amends.”

“I’m trying,” Dominic said.

“You will do more than try,” Rosa said. “You will teach. You will tell the story until someone younger gets home because he heard it.”

---

So he did.

When his license returned and the scar tissue over his pride stopped throbbing, Dominic volunteered to speak at the DUI class once a month. He told the story the way Javier had taught him to: plainly, without defense.

“Wine is our living,” he’d begin, “but it isn’t our excuse. I thought I was fine. I wasn’t. I thought I was a good guy who deserved a warning. I wasn’t. I was just lucky—and luck runs out.”

He spoke at the parish youth group. He spoke to the high school Ag program. He spoke to the harvest crews in Spanish—badly, but sincerely. No manejen borrachos. He watched the foreman nod, watched young men look at their boots—listening the way men listen when a warning matches the shape of their own lives.

Once, at the end of a talk, a kid with grease under his nails raised a hand. “So what do you do different now?”

Dominic lifted his phone. “Keys stay home if I’m tasting. Or I hand them to my brother. Or I sleep on the office couch. Or I walk. Or I drink water and go to bed mad. Pride isn’t worth a funeral.”

The kid nodded like that was a math problem he could solve.

---

A year later, on a hot October night, Sofia found Dominic sitting on the porch with a glass of Pellegrino and a slice of lemon floating like a tiny moon.

“You look like you’re thinking,” she said.

“I am,” he admitted. “About measures.”

“Wine measures?”

“Mercy,” he said. “How much we need. How much we owe.”

She sat. “You’ve changed.”

He laughed softly. “I got older in a hurry.”

She bumped his shoulder. “Old enough to put it in the book someday?”

He looked out at the rows glowing in the last light. “Put it in,” he said. “If it keeps one idiot from doing what I did, write it big.”

Michael stepped out, drying his hands on a towel, and took them both in—his brother with his mineral water, his niece with her pen always nearby, the vineyard carrying on as though forgiveness were a root system.

“Tomorrow’s pick starts at five,” Michael said. “Sleep.”

Dominic stood, stretched, and looked once at the truck keys hanging by the door. He left them there. He walked to his room. The house settled around him—old wood, good ghosts, the quiet approval of a second chance taken.

The vineyard breathed, steady as a confession finished. And the rows, patient as always, waited for morning, when a chastened man would show up early, work a little harder, and keep teaching what he’d learned the hardest way possible:

Some storms you harvest. Some you survive. The best ones you turn into warnings for someone else.

---

Proposition 187

In 1994, Proposition 187 ignited the valley. On TV, Governor Pete Wilson promised to crack down on “illegal aliens.” The measure would bar undocumented immigrants from schools and hospitals.

At the Sieli Sunday table, debate flared like wildfire.

Dominic, Frank’s son and now in his forties, slammed his fist. “Finally! About time California took a stand. I’m sick of paying for freeloaders.”

Sofia leaned forward, her voice sharp. “Freeloaders? Dominic, those ‘illegals’ pick our grapes. They break their backs so you can sit in that chair with your steak.”

Dominic sneered. “If they can’t come legal, they shouldn’t come at all. My grandfather did it the right way.”

Antonio, gone now, could not speak. But Pietro, older and grayer, raised his hand for silence. “The right way? When we came, they spat on us. Called us dagos, papists, criminals. We did not come legal. We came desperate. And you—” his voice cracked, “you would build the same wall they once built against us?”

The table fell silent until Michael muttered, “Times are different. We’re Americans now.”

Pietro’s eyes filled with grief. “Then God help us. Because we have forgotten.”

The Vows and the Vines

The summer of 1996 shimmered over the Central Valley like a mirage of heat and memory. For the first time in years, the old vineyard was dressed for celebration. White folding chairs lined the path between the rows, and strings of lights hung from the sycamores like captured fireflies. The scent of rosemary, dust, and fermenting grapes drifted across the air as relatives—Italian, Mexican, and everything between—gathered beneath a sun the color of brass.

Sofia Sieli, twenty-five and radiant, stood in Nonna Rosa’s bedroom before the mirror, adjusting her veil. The lace had yellowed slightly with age—her grandmother’s lace, stitched in another century—but it still shimmered. Her uncle Dominic leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, pretending not to tear up.

“She’s really going through with it,” he muttered.

From behind him, Michael grunted. “A Sieli marrying a Morales. Never thought I’d see the day.”

Sofia turned, laughing softly. “You make it sound like I’m moving to Mars.”

“It’s not Mars,” Michael said. “It’s just… the vineyard’s been in the Sieli name for over a hundred and forty years. That’s all.”

Sofia stepped closer, her reflection framed by both men behind her. “And it’ll stay that way,” she said. “If I ever inherit this place, it will always be Sieli Vineyards. I promise you that.”

Dominic frowned, though not unkindly. “Even though your kids will have his name?”

“The name doesn’t make the vineyard,” she said. “The people do. You taught me that.”

Michael looked at her for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “You’ve got Nonna’s backbone,” he said. “And her way of making me feel stupid for arguing.”

Outside, the organist began to play Ave Maria.

The brothers exchanged a glance, half gruff, half proud. “All right,” Dominic sighed. “If you’re going to do this, at least let your uncles walk you down.”

The ceremony took place between the vineyard rows, sunlight threading through the vines. Daniel Morales waited beneath an arbor draped in olive branches and white ribbons, his tuxedo collar open, his nerves visible in every breath. He was the son of Mexican farmworkers from Tulare, a man who had grown up picking fruit under the same Valley sun that had baked the Sieli vines for generations.

When Sofia reached him, the world seemed to pause—the Ligurian and Mexican bloodlines meeting under California sky. The priest spoke of love and roots, of two families who had tilled the same earth for different dreams.

At the reception, laughter and music spilled into the night. There was lasagna beside carne asada, Italian wine poured beside bottles of Modelo, and a cake topped with both flags—Italy and Mexico, side by side. Someone played That’s Amore on accordion until Daniel’s cousins broke into Cielito Lindo, and soon everyone was singing both songs at once.

Later, as the valley cooled and the lights flickered low, Michael stood by the gate, a glass of red wine in hand. Sofia found him there, barefoot now, her dress dusted with earth and petals.

“You did good, kid,” he said quietly. “He’s a good man.”

She smiled. “So you’re not worried about the name anymore?”

He looked out across the vineyard, where the moonlight silvered the rows. “A vineyard doesn’t live by its name. It lives by the people who tend it. You keep that, and it’ll never die.”

She took his hand. “Then the vines are safe.”

Somewhere behind them, Dominic led a toast, his deep voice carrying across the night: “To the Sielis and the Morales—may the roots hold, and may the branches never forget where they came from!”

Laughter and applause followed. Sofia leaned her head against her uncle’s shoulder and watched the lights glow over the vineyard that had seen so much of their history.

In that moment, the old and the new found peace together—the vines, the bloodlines, and the promise that both would go on.

---

Wine on the World Stage

“We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.”
— Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1861

“Italy is made, now it remains to make Italians.”
— Massimo d’Azeglio, 1861

“What is a nation, if not a people bound by memory, language, and sacrifice?”
— Pietro Borsieri, c. 1840s

By the late 1990s, California wines were competing with Australia, Chile, Argentina. Trade agreements like NAFTA opened borders for goods but closed them tighter for people.

At a trade show in San Francisco, Sofia pitched Sieli wines beside sleek Napa vintners. A French buyer raised an eyebrow. “Siely? Italian? You are more American than Italian, no?”

Sofia hesitated. “We are both.”

Later, in the hotel bar, she vented to her cousin Clara. “They erase us. To Americans, we were too Italian. To Europeans, too American. Where do we belong?”

Clara sipped her drink, swirling the last of the Chianti.
“Maybe nowhere,” she said softly. “Maybe everywhere.”

Sofia sat in silence, staring at the hotel’s gilded ceiling. The ache of the French buyer’s words gnawed at her. Too American. Too Italian. Not enough of either.

Names and Nations

Back home in Fresno, Sofia carried her unease into the kitchen where Uncle Michael sat late one evening, nursing a glass of vineyard red. The lamp cast a soft glow over the old oak table.

“Uncle Mike,” she began, “do you ever feel like we don’t belong? The Americans think we’re Italian. The Europeans think we’re American. I don’t know where that leaves us.”

Michael set his glass down with a deliberate clink. His silver hair caught the light, his voice a low rumble.

“Belonging’s a funny thing, Sofia. People ask me all the time—‘You’re Italian, right?’ And I tell ’em the truth. We’re Americans first. That’s who we are. But we cherish where we came from. We keep the food, the saints’ days, the stubborn ways of our ancestors. That’s not a contradiction. That’s a root system.”

Sofia frowned. “But doesn’t that just make us half of each, never whole?”

Michael leaned forward, thick finger tapping the table as if to drive a nail.

“When Giuseppe and Antonio came here in the 1850s, there wasn’t even an Italy. Not yet. Italy didn’t become a country until 1861. Back then, our people were Ligurian—from Genoa, part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. They thought of themselves as Ligurians, Genoese. Family, village, parish—that was their identity. Nations were for kings and politicians.”

He shook his head, remembering.

“But when they landed here, none of that mattered. To the Anglos, they were dagos, wops, papists. Didn’t matter if you were from Genoa, Sicily, or Venice—you were just foreign. So they became American. Not by forgetting, but by adding. They kept the bread, the wine, the rosary. And they learned English, bought land, fought in American wars. My grandfather used to say: ‘The soil don’t care about flags. It only remembers who tills it.’”

Sofia’s eyes softened. “So… we’re not too Italian or too American. We’re just… both.”

Michael smiled faintly, lines deepening around his eyes.
“We’re Sieli. That’s enough.”

Sofia reached for her uncle’s hand, the weight of his words pressing down but steadying her too. Outside the kitchen window, the vineyard lay quiet in the moonlight, rows of vines rooted deeper than the boundaries men drew on maps.

---

Editorial Note

Michael’s comments reflect historical reality. The modern nation of Italy did not exist until March 1861, when the Risorgimento movement united most of the peninsula under the Kingdom of Italy. Before then, the peninsula was divided into separate states:

• The Kingdom of Sardinia (including Piedmont, Liguria, and Savoy),

• The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (southern Italy and Sicily),

• The Papal States (central Italy, under direct rule of the Pope),

• And smaller duchies such as Parma, Modena, and Tuscany.

Thus, when families like the Sielis emigrated in the 1850s, they would have identified by region, village, or dialect, not as “Italian” in the modern sense. In California, however, such distinctions collapsed. Anglo-Americans lumped all newcomers together as “foreigners” or “dagos,” erasing the fine grain of identity.

Michael’s perspective—that becoming American meant adding to, not erasing, the old world—captures the experience of many immigrant families who bridged two identities without ever fully belonging to either.

---

A Funeral and a Fight

In 2001, Pietro died at eighty-one. His funeral filled St. Alphonsus, the pews packed with Italians, Mexicans, Anglos, and farmworkers alike.

At the wake, the family gathered under the sycamores. Wine flowed, but the mood was heavy.

Dominic raised a glass. “To Nonno Pietro—an American success story.”

Sofia bristled. “He wasn’t just that. He was an immigrant. He never stopped being one. He never forgot what it felt like to be hated.”

Dominic smirked. “He also never forgot discipline. Work. Respect. Things those protestors with their signs don’t understand.”

Sofia snapped. “He fed those protestors! He marched with the farmworkers when you hid behind your fence!”

Voices rose, old wounds opening. Finally, Lucia, frail but fierce, struck the table with her cane. “Enough! You disgrace him with this fighting. Pietro lived for vines, for roots, for family. If you tear that apart, you bury him twice.”

The table fell into silence, the vines whispering in the distance.

Miranda Returns

The first rain of the new decade came like a warning. Not a storm yet—just enough to settle dust and smell of wet earth. Dominic stood beneath the eaves of the porch, coffee in hand, watching vines drink it in. It had been nearly three years since Miranda Carmichael last walked these rows. He’d buried her memory under contracts and court filings. But ghosts, like roots, don’t stay buried.

Sofia appeared behind him, letter in hand, heavy and unmarked. “It’s her,” she said simply.

Dominic’s jaw tightened without speaking. He took the envelope, hands steady. Later at the table, Michael read the letter aloud:

“Golden Fields Partners … renewed interest in development partnership … revisiting prior discussions … revised proposal … consideration for renewed offer …”

Dominic’s voice was low. “She’s back.”

Michael folded the letter. “Not just her. The whole machine.”

Sofia’s eyes were cold with resolve. “She’ll play it differently this time. This isn’t about seduction or charm anymore.”

Dominic ran a hand through his hair. “I won’t fall for it again.”

---

Her return was quiet. At first, it came in subtle moves: a new shell company quietly purchasing parcels at the edge of town. A campaign for a zoning ballot measure in the nearby township. Donations funneled into “infrastructure improvements.” Her name did not appear—but her reach was everywhere.

Then, on a Tuesday night, Dominic walked into a regional development hearing: there she stood, in black, her hair pulled back, speaking to the board on behalf of Golden Fields Partners. The chair introduced her: Miranda Carmichael, Representative, Golden Fields.

The wind shifted in his chest.

They locked eyes. She offered a small, composed nod. He swallowed.

---

Afterwards, rain hammered the windows outside as Dominic cornered her under an awning in the lot. Boots splashing in puddles.

“You have some nerve coming here,” he said.

She tilted her umbrella. “I never left, Dominic. I just let you believe you won.”

“You won’t take this land.”

She smiled, sharp. “You mistake land for leverage. This valley is changing. Developers, tech investors, tourism—they’re coming. I just showed up first.”

“You’ll lose,” he warned.

“Maybe. But I don’t bleed as easily as you do.” She turned toward her dark Jaguar, heels clicking like distant gunshots. “See you soon.”

---

At home, the air was heavy with rain and tension. Michael and Sofia watched Dominic dripping at the doorway, anger and disappointment in his eyes.

“She’s back,” he said.

Sofia answered with calm strength: “Then we hold the line.”

Michael nodded. “This time, we don’t wait for her first move.”

Dominic stared out the window, at the vines shaking in the wind. Miranda Carmichael was no longer a memory. She was a storm.

Some wars begin with fire. Some with paper. This one began with a return.

---

From there, the pressure crept in all directions: neighbor parcels quietly snapped up to block access, new environmental assessments launched by silent agencies, local press seeded with rumors of water mismanagement and illegal easements. Golden Fields never sent crowds or threats. They whispered. They folded their claws and pressed.

Dominic labored in the fields, his hands soaked in soil and anger—rebuilding his focus, listening to the land. Miranda never showed herself in the vineyard again, but on city council agendas, in legal filings, in newsletter pamphlets: her presence was a shadow.

And as the decade marched on, the fight was no longer just about resisting Golden Fields. It was about whether the Sieli name could survive a new kind of siege: one fought not with torches and rifles, but with titles, codes, votes, and silent strategy.

---

The Younger Eyes

By the 2000s, a new generation of Sielis filled the rows: Sofia’s children, teenagers with mixed features and American slang. They spoke little Italian, but they asked questions.

“Mom,” her daughter Elena asked one night, “is it true they called you people dagos?”

Sofia nodded slowly. “Yes. It was a word of hate.”

“Then why do Uncle Dominic and Uncle Mike call Mexicans names?”

Sofia’s throat tightened. “Because they forgot. Because they chose comfort over memory. But you—” she touched her daughter’s cheek—“you don’t have to forget.”

---

 The Internet Arrives

The year was 1999, and the kitchen smelled of espresso and simmering tomato sauce — the same as it always had. But on the table, next to the breadbasket, lay something new: a glossy brochure from the local phone company.

On the cover was a stock photo of a family smiling at a computer, the words “Get Connected: The World Wide Web Awaits You!” splashed across in bright letters.

Michael picked it up, squinting through his bifocals. “World Wide… Web? What the hell is this, spiders?”

Dominic leaned over his shoulder, brow furrowed. “Looks like a scam to me. Ain’t no such thing as a world wide anything. Whole world in a box? Come on.”

Sofia, in her twenties then, rolled her eyes. “It’s not spiders, Uncle Mike. It’s the internet. Everyone’s talking about it. You can send mail instantly, look up anything you want, even shop. You need this if you’re gonna keep the vineyard in business.”

Michael barked a laugh. “Shop? On a computer? What do you do, shove your credit card into the screen?”

The younger cousins chuckled, but Dominic stayed stone-faced. “We’ve been selling wine just fine without no internet. Folks call, they order, they show up. Simple. Why complicate it?”

Sofia pressed. “Because that’s not how people are doing business anymore! Restaurants are making websites, families are buying online. You could ship Sieli wine across the whole country. You could tell our story to the world.”

From the far end of the table, old Aunt Rosa spoke up, her voice quavering with age. “Email, they call it. I seen it on the news. But tell me this — how can you put a letter in a wire? Doesn’t make sense.”

Michael grunted, waving the brochure. “That’s what I’m sayin’. Letters need paper. Stamps. A wire’s for electricity, not words.”

Sofia shook her head, exasperated. “It’s not wires, it’s— look, it doesn’t matter how. Just know it works. Everybody’s getting online. Even churches are making websites now.”

Dominic squinted. “Web… site? What’s a site? Like the vineyard? You plant grapes on this… web?”

The room erupted in laughter, but Sofia wasn’t done. She leaned forward, fire in her eyes. “I’m serious. You want the Sieli name to survive the next generation? You need to be out there. The internet is the future.”

Michael tapped his chest. “No. We’re the future. Our vines, our hands, our name. No machine is gonna replace that.”

“Maybe not replace it,” Sofia shot back, “but it’s gonna change it. Whether you like it or not.”

For a long moment, no one spoke. The kitchen hummed with the sound of the refrigerator, the clink of cutlery. Then Dominic reached for the brochure again, staring at the smiling faces on the cover.

“What’s an email, anyway?” he muttered. “You lick it? Stamp it? How does it get there?”

Sofia laughed so hard she nearly spilled her wine. “No, Uncle Dom. You just… type it. You hit send, and it’s there in seconds. Faster than the mailman. Faster than a phone call, even.”

Michael snorted. “Faster don’t always mean better. Sometimes faster just means mistakes quicker.”

Still, when the first clunky desktop computer arrived at the vineyard office a few months later — beige tower, dial-up modem, the screech of connection filling the room — even Michael leaned in close, watching the screen as if it were alive.

And when Sofia set up their very first email account — SieliVineyard@aol.com — and sent a message to herself just to show them how it worked, Michael’s eyes widened despite himself.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “The letter’s really in there. Guess the world’s changin’ faster than we are.”

Dominic crossed his arms. “Yeah, well… we’ll see if the internet can prune a vine.”

The room erupted again, laughter mixing with disbelief. But deep down, even the stubborn old men knew Sofia was right: the future had arrived, whether they were ready or not.

Reality and Other Fictions

By the late 1990s, the world had discovered a new kind of theater—one where ordinary people played themselves. Cameras replaced confessionals, and drama no longer needed scripts. It was only a matter of time before even the vineyard caught Hollywood’s eye.

A producer from Los Angeles arrived one June afternoon in a white SUV, hair slicked, smile gleaming, business card embossed. He toured the rows, tasted the wine, and declared, “This place is pure Americana with a twist of Tuscany. You’ve got multi-generational drama, family politics, old-world charm. It’s perfect for reality TV.”

Sofia, then in her early thirties, leaned forward in her chair, half-flattered, half-curious. “You mean like The Osbournes but with better lighting?”

“Exactly,” the producer said. “We’ll show the world what it’s really like to run a family vineyard. You’ll inspire people—heritage, legacy, passion. And if we capture a little conflict along the way,” he added, grinning, “well, that’s television.”

Michael groaned. “Television used to mean somethin’. Now it’s people yellin’ about nothing for half an hour.” He pointed his cigar toward the man. “You think we’re gonna air our dirty laundry for strangers to gawk at? Forget it.”

Sofia countered gently, “It’s not about laundry, Uncle Mike. It’s about visibility. People would see who we really are—an immigrant family that worked for everything it has.”

“Worked,” Dominic muttered. “Not performed.”

In the end, the argument stretched across three family dinners, two bottles of Zinfandel, and one phone call from the network promising “creative control.” Against Michael’s protests, Sofia signed the contract—one season, six episodes, titled Roots & Vines: The Sieli Legacy.

When filming began, the vineyard became a stage. Camera crews followed them through the rows, mics clipped to their collars. A young producer with gelled hair whispered questions just out of frame: “How does it feel knowing this land’s been in your family for 150 years?” “Do old wounds still linger?”

Michael learned quickly to spot the red recording light and go silent whenever it blinked. Dominic, after a week, refused to wear the mic at all. “Feels like I’m confessin’ to a robot,” he said.

But Sofia thrived under the attention. She walked the property with the confidence of a CEO, narrating the harvest, explaining fermentation, even giving a tearful toast about legacy and love that made it into the season finale. For a brief, flickering moment, they were local celebrities. Tourists came asking for autographs and selfies beside the vines.

Then the reviews came.

“The Sielis,” one critic wrote, “are too normal for prime time. Too real to be Reality.” The show was canceled after one season, replaced by a dating series filmed in Beverly Hills.

When the cameras packed up and left, Michael stood by the gate and watched the last van drive off. “Good riddance,” he said. “Now maybe the grapes’ll get some peace.”

Sofia smiled wistfully. “You have to admit, Uncle Mike—we looked good in high definition.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Maybe. But real life don’t need a camera to prove it’s real.”

The vines rustled in agreement. The only lens that mattered, it seemed, was the one that faced the soil.

September 11th

When the towers fell in 2001, the country hardened. Flags flew from every porch. New enemies were named. Borders were tightened.

At another family table, Dominic declared, “Now do you see? We must protect ourselves. Close the borders. Build walls.”

Michael nodded sharply. “And keep them out—every last one of them. These Muslim nations breed hate. We can’t allow them here. America is a Judeo-Christian nation.”

Sofia’s voice trembled with fury. “Do you even hear yourselves? The very people who once shouted ‘Christian nation’ are the same ones who spat at us, called us papists, said Catholics didn’t belong. Do you not remember how they tried to bar our grandparents from entering this country at all?”

Michael bristled, but Dominic cut in, his jaw tight. “That was then. This is now. Those men on those planes were Muslims. You can’t change that.”

“But you’re blaming millions for the crimes of a few,” Sofia shot back. “You want to use fear to exile whole peoples, whole faiths. That’s not safety—that’s the same prejudice Nonno Pietro fought against.”

The table grew heavy with silence. At last, Michael leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what I do know. I know what I saw on the TV. I know the ashes that covered New York. And I know this: I will never allow that to happen again, not while I live.”

For once, Dominic hesitated. He poured wine, took a long drink, and then added quietly: “I agreed with Afghanistan. We had to go after Al Qaeda. They hit us first.”

Michael nodded, his voice low. “But then Bush turned to Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction? Hussein? That smelled different. Even I didn’t buy it.”

Sofia leaned forward, her eyes searching theirs. “So you can see it. You can see how fear can be twisted into wars that never end. Fear that leads us to strike at the wrong targets.”

Lucia, nearing ninety, raised her shaky hand. Her voice, though faint, carried through the tension. “I am old. I have seen mobs, hunger, war. And I will tell you this—fear is the cheapest wine. It sours the soul. Do not drink it.”

The younger cousins looked between them, uncertain. Some nodded with Dominic and Michael, others with Sofia. The vineyard stood in the middle, its roots deep, its branches pulling in opposite directions.

 Dot-Com Vines

By 2002, the beige box in the vineyard office had become as much a part of the family as the crucifix on the wall. It hummed and whirred, and whenever someone tried to go online, the modem screeched like a demon being exorcised.

Michael hated it. “Sounds like the damn thing’s choking to death every time you turn it on.”

Sofia rolled her eyes. “That’s the dial-up, Uncle Mike. It’s normal. You’ll get used to it.”

Dominic muttered from the corner. “I’ll never get used to it. A machine shouldn’t sound like it’s screaming just to do its job.”

But Sofia pressed on. She had convinced them to register a domain — SieliVineyard.com — and even cobbled together a basic website through a hosting service.

One evening, she sat the family down around the monitor. “Okay, look — this is our website. See? People can read our history, see pictures of the vineyard, even send us messages right here.”

The screen loaded slowly, line by line, until an image of the vineyard appeared, pixelated and a little crooked.

Michael squinted. “That’s supposed to be our land? Looks like a quilt somebody spilled wine on.”

Dominic grumbled. “And what’s this ‘Contact Us’ button? Anybody can just write us a letter now? Strangers? Crooks? No thank you.”

Sofia laughed. “That’s the whole point, Uncle Dom. People want to connect. That’s how you sell wine. You let them know who you are.”

He shook his head. “I already know who I am. If they want my wine, they can drive down Highway 41 and buy it themselves.”

But then came the emails. The very first one was from a woman in New York, who had stumbled across their website.

“I saw your family’s story online,” Sofia read aloud. “I’d love to order a case of your zinfandel for my father’s birthday.”

Michael blinked. “From New York? She found us on this… internet thing?”

Sofia grinned. “Exactly. That’s the power of the web.”

Dominic muttered, “Or it’s a trick. How do we even know she’s real? Could be a scam.”

A few weeks later, another email came in: “Dear Sieli Vineyards, I am a Nigerian prince in need of your assistance…”

Michael threw his hands in the air. “See! I told you! Crooks! They want to steal the vineyard right through the wires!”

Sofia nearly spit out her coffee laughing. “That’s spam, Uncle Mike. Everyone gets those. You just delete them.”

“Spam?” Dominic frowned. “I thought that was meat in a can.”

Despite their stubbornness, the website stayed. Orders trickled in, mostly locals at first, then a few from out of state. Sofia set up a mailing list, though Michael still called it “the chain letter.”

By 2005, one of the cousins had made a MySpace page for the vineyard. “Look,” Sofia said proudly, “we’ve got friends online now.”

Michael frowned at the blinking graphics and loud background music. “Friends? Those ain’t friends. Those are strangers staring at us through a keyhole.”

Dominic agreed. “If they want to be friends, let ’em come have a glass of wine on the porch. That’s friendship. Not this nonsense.”

But slowly, begrudgingly, they began to see the value. People from across the country started writing, sharing stories of their own immigrant grandparents, their own vineyards, their own struggles. The internet, strange and noisy as it was, carried echoes of the same thing that bound the Sielis to their land: connection, across distance and time.

Michael still refused to type an email himself — he dictated them to Sofia, pacing the room like a general giving orders. Dominic called every password “a goddamn secret handshake.” But the vineyard had taken its first steps into the digital age, and there was no turning back.

“Just a Fad”

By 2009, the vineyard office had changed. The old corkboard of invoices and handwritten notes was now half-covered by a glowing monitor. The beige tower had been replaced with a sleeker computer, and a little wireless router sat blinking on the desk like some alien heartbeat.

Sofia, now in her thirties, tapped at the keys with practiced ease. “Okay,” she said, excitement in her voice. “The next step is Facebook.”

Michael leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, eyes narrowed with suspicion. His hair had gone silver at the temples, but his bark was still sharp. “Facebook. What the hell is that supposed to be? Some kind of yearbook for strangers?”

Dominic grunted from the corner, arms folded tight. “I don’t like it. Why should people we don’t know be lookin’ at our vineyard, our family pictures? Feels wrong. Feels… exposed.”

Sofia sighed. “It’s not like that. Everyone’s doing it now — businesses, churches, even schools. You post pictures, updates, events. People like your page, they follow you, they order wine because they feel connected to us.”

Michael barked a laugh. “Like our page? Who cares if strangers ‘like’ us? Either you drink the wine or you don’t. This ain’t about being liked. It’s about surviving. And let me tell you — this internet thing? It’s a fad. Like disco. Like Beanie Babies. In ten years, nobody will even remember it.”

Sofia looked at him like he had three heads. “Uncle Mike, people are making their whole lives online now. News, shopping, politics — all of it. This isn’t going away. If you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist to half the world.”

Dominic snorted. “Good. Let’s not exist, then. We did fine before all this. Vines don’t need computers. Grapes don’t ripen faster because someone clicked a button.”

But Sofia was ready. She pulled up a photo of the vineyard at sunset — golden light across the rows, the American flag rippling on its pole. She typed a caption: “Our family has been growing grapes in Fresno County since the 1850s. We’re proud to share our story with the world. Welcome to Sieli Vineyards.”

She clicked “Post.”

Michael watched the screen like it might explode. “And now what?”

Sofia pointed. “Now people can see this. Anywhere. Italy, New York, San Francisco. In a few hours, someone you’ve never met could be reading about your grandfather Antonio.”

Dominic leaned forward, scowling. “And why would I want some stranger in Italy poking around our business?”

Michael muttered, “It’s ridiculous. The internet’s a toy for kids, not for men who work. Give it a few years, it’ll collapse. Just watch. All this ‘world wide whatever’ will blow away like smoke.”

But then, within minutes, the page pinged with its first “like.” A young couple from Los Angeles had found the vineyard online and left a comment: “Beautiful history. Can we come visit sometime?”

Michael’s jaw tightened. He scratched his chin, then muttered, “Well… maybe they got good taste.”

Sofia grinned. “Told you. The world is changing, Uncle Mike. Whether you like it or not.”

Dominic shook his head, grumbling, “The world’s always changing. Doesn’t mean it’s changing for the better.”

But even he leaned in closer to see as more names began to appear on the screen, strangers reaching across the void, knocking at the vineyard door — not with torches this time, but with clicks and comments.

And though Michael would never admit it out loud, some part of him wondered if maybe — just maybe — the internet wasn’t going anywhere after all.

 The Obama Years

November 5, 2008 – Election Night

The television flickered in the corner of the kitchen, its glow casting blue light across the walls. NBC’s anchor leaned into the camera, his voice solemn but electric with history.

“Barack Obama, projected winner… the first African American president of the United States. Crowds are pouring into Grant Park in Chicago tonight, waving flags, cheering, some in tears. The world is watching this moment. History has been made.”

Cheers roared through the TV speaker, thousands chanting “Yes We Can!” The sound filled the farmhouse kitchen, spilling over the smell of garlic bread and strong coffee.

Michael scowled, muting the set with a jab of the remote. “That’s enough of that.”

Sofia spun in her chair, incredulous. “Enough? Uncle Mike, the whole country is celebrating. You’re seeing history right here! My kids will read about this someday.”

Michael, in his early sixties now, broad-shouldered and gray at the temples, slammed his palm on the table. The cups rattled. “Don’t start, Sofia. You know me better than that. I’m not racist. I never was. I just don’t like the man’s politics. He’s a Democrat, and I can’t stand his policies. That’s it.”

Dominic, sitting across with his arms crossed, nodded slowly. His voice was gravel, worn down by years in the sun. “You think he cares about people like us? Folks who work with their hands, who sweat to keep a vineyard alive? Pretty speeches don’t mean a damn thing when you can’t pay the bills.”

Sofia shook her head, eyes flashing. “That’s not how it sounds to people out there. You tear him down, and all they hear is the same thing they’ve been hearing forever — that you can’t stand a Black man in the White House.”

Michael leaned forward, finger stabbing the air. “He’s half White! Half! But nobody ever says that, do they? Nobody calls him the first biracial president. No. It’s always ‘the first Black president,’ and the second you disagree with him, suddenly you’re branded a racist. That’s not fair, Sofia. That’s not honest.”

Dominic leaned in too, his eyes narrowing. “And don’t you dare lecture us about prejudice. Our grandfather was called dago, wop, papist — spat on, chased out of places. We were outsiders long before you were born. Don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like to be hated just for who you are.”

Sofia’s voice softened, though her chin stayed high. “I know, Uncle Dom. I know what Nonno went through. But this is different. Times have changed. And when you talk like that, when you slam Obama every time he opens his mouth, you don’t sound like men who know prejudice. You sound like men who can’t see past it.”

The kitchen went quiet. The muted TV screen replayed images of Obama’s victory speech, his family waving to the crowd. The clock ticked on the wall. Outside, the rows of vines lay in silence, their roots sunk deep in the valley soil.

Michael finally leaned back, rubbing his forehead with a tired hand. “Maybe we just see the world different, Sofia. Maybe that’s the real divide. Not race. Not even politics. Just generations. You grew up in a different America than we did.”

Sofia looked at him, at Dominic, at the table heavy with food that nobody touched. “Maybe so,” she said quietly. “But don’t expect me to stop pushing you. Not when it matters.”

The TV screen glowed on, a new president waving to a jubilant crowd, as three Sielis sat at the old kitchen table, divided by years, yet bound by blood.

A House Divided

March 23, 2010 – CNN News Report

 The television buzzed again in the corner of the kitchen. A sharp-voiced anchor gestured at the camera.

“Today, President Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act, one of the most sweeping healthcare reforms in American history. Supporters say it will expand access to millions of uninsured Americans. Critics argue it represents government overreach of unprecedented scale.”

Michael groaned and muted the set. “Government overreach? That’s the polite way of sayin’ socialism.”

Dominic, now with reading glasses perched low on his nose, waved his hand dismissively. “I told you. They’ll use this to get their hooks into every small business, every farmer, every family that ever tried to stand on its own two feet. Just wait — premiums will skyrocket, taxes too. Nothing free in this world.”

Sofia, sitting across from them, leaned forward, eyes blazing. “Free? This is about people who can’t afford to go to a doctor finally being able to see one. You think it’s easy for a single mom in Fresno to pay for her kid’s asthma inhaler? Or a field worker without insurance who breaks his arm?”

Michael barked, his voice like thunder. “Don’t preach to me about working folks, Sofia! I’ve been breaking my back on this land for sixty years. I’ve hired more men than you’ve ever met. Mexicans, Blacks, Portuguese, Okies, you name it. And I paid ‘em fair. That’s not government making me do it. That’s me. That’s how it should be. Not Washington telling me what I owe and how to live.”

Dominic crossed his arms, his tone colder. “And don’t forget, Sofia, the same government that gives, takes. First it’s health care. Next it’s guns, churches, schools. Mark my words — this man’s setting a precedent that’ll bite harder down the road.”

Sofia’s jaw tightened. “You two sound paranoid. Obama isn’t out to steal your farm or your rifles. He’s trying to build a country where everyone has a chance, not just the ones lucky enough to have land and family behind them. That’s the America I believe in.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the night outside. The only sound was the wind pressing against the farmhouse windows.

After the Amen (circa 2010)

A year after Teresa died, the pew still kept her shape.

Michael tried not to look at it—tried to focus on Father Ochoa’s homily, on the way the stained glass broke the morning into workable colors—but grief had a way of tugging at the sleeve. He sat straighter, folded his big hands together, and willed himself, for the length of the Creed, to be a man with fewer memories.

After Mass, the parish spilled into the courtyard in a familiar eddy—babies fussing, old men arguing about irrigation, teenagers pretending not to be shy. Michael stood near the statue of St. Joseph, nodding at condolences that had grown softer with time. He was about to escape when she stepped in front of him, smiling like she meant it.

“Michael,” she said, “I saved you a cinnamon roll.”

Her name was Angela Cortez—late fifties, a widow, choir alto, the kind of woman who knew everyone’s birthday and which kid had a scholarship audition. She held out a paper plate. The frosting shone in the sun like a small apology from the universe.

“Thank you,” Michael said, taking it. “You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to,” she replied, tilting her head. “You’ll walk me to the bake sale table? People run me over if I don’t have a bodyguard.”

He offered his arm, surprised to hear his own voice come out steady. They spoke of harmless things: the trumpet section overshooting the Gloria, the apricot crop, the rumor that the Knights might finally fix the wobbly flagpole. When she laughed, it sounded like a door opening on a warm kitchen.

“Coffee sometime?” Angela asked, more brave than coy. “There’s a place on Belmont that doesn’t burn the beans.”

Michael’s mouth said, “Sure.” His chest said, “Careful.”

---

Sofia found him an hour later at the vineyard office, staring at the calendar like it had changed languages.

“You look like a man deciding whether to jump in the canal,” she said, leaning on the doorframe. “What’s up?”

“Coffee,” he said.

“Is this a code word or the beverage?”

“A woman asked me.”

Sofia’s face split into a grin. “From church? Oh, Uncle Mike!” She crossed and kissed his cheek. “This is good. You’re allowed, you know.”

He bristled at the tenderness, the way men do when a truth lines up a little too cleanly. “It’s just coffee.”

“Sure,” she said lightly. “Just coffee. And if you decide after seven years you like coffee again, there’s no law against it.”

“It’s been one year,” he muttered.

She softened. “I know.”

He looked past her, out at the rows. The vines had leafed out thick that spring, a showy proof that the world didn’t stop when yours did. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself,” he said. “Or worse—make a fool of her.”

“You won’t,” Sofia said. “But you can say no later if it doesn’t feel right. You don’t owe anybody a performance.”

He nodded. He wished grief came with a manual and a torque wrench.

---

They met on a Tuesday at ten. The café smelled of orange peel and espresso. Angela wore a denim jacket and a scarf with roses. She’d chosen a table by the window where the sunlight made a long rectangle—half of it warm, half of it gentled by shade. “Pick your side,” she said. “I like a room that tells the truth about a day.”

Michael chose the shade. He didn’t say why.

They talked. It surprised him how easy it was to be—if not cheerful, then unserious. She’d taught second grade until retirement and now helped her son run a nursery on the edge of town. She had a weak spot for strays: cats, kids without grandparents, the infirm neighbor with the broken gate. She asked after the vineyard with real interest, wanting to understand rootstock and frost fans and why grapes needed to suffer to be good.

“My husband—Miguel—thought wine was showing off,” she teased. “But he also thought salsa needed to be weaponized.”

“God rest him,” Michael said, and meant it.

“God rest Teresa, too,” she replied, soft and sure. “I liked her. She made inhumanly good biscotti.”

“She cheated,” Michael said. “Almond extract from the Italian deli only open on Thursdays.”

They both laughed. It felt like stepping into a room without checking the ceiling for leaks.

“Walk?” Angela asked after refills. “There’s an antique shop down the block that sells old rosaries. I like to imagine whose prayers they held.”

They wandered past storefronts and melons piled on pallets. Angela slipped her hand into the crook of his arm without asking. He didn’t pull away. He didn’t even think to. An hour later, in the parking lot, she squeezed his elbow. “This was nice,” she said. “No pressure. Just… nice.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was.”

He drove home feeling like a man walking a ditch bank he’d known all his life and finding a new bend.

---

Sofia met him on the porch with two glasses of iced tea and a question in her eyebrows.

“Fine,” he said before she asked. “We talked. We walked. Nobody fainted.”

“Well,” she said, settling beside him. “That’s already better than your first date with Aunt Teresa. Nonna said you tripped over your own boots and spilled Chianti on your shirt.”

“I married above my station,” he admitted.

“And you might… try having coffee again,” she ventured.

He let the silence do a lap of the porch. “I don’t know what I’m trying.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Try is a verb.”

---

For a few weeks, Michael and Angela met on careful terms—church socials, coffee after the 8 a.m. Mass, a parish workday where they both ended up scooping gravel into wheelbarrows and arguing amiably about tomato varieties. He found that he liked the way she held a conversation like a good driver holds a lane—firm, gentle corrections, an eye for the shoulder.

He also found the guilt: a tide that rose without the moon’s permission. He’d be laughing and then would see Teresa’s hands kneading bread, Teresa’s jaw set when she was about to forgive him for something she swore she’d remember until Easter. The love didn’t dim; it glowed stubborn as an ember even as he stood in a new circle of light. He didn’t know if there was room for both.

One afternoon, he took Angela by the church to show her the stained glass Teresa had fundraised for—a panel of the Visitation. The two women in the glass leaned toward each other, joy and worry equal in their posture.

“Beautiful,” Angela murmured. “Your Teresa picked that?”

“She said it looked like two women telling each other, ‘I believe you.’”

They stood, quiet. Michael felt the ground tilting toward a sentence. He tried to step away from it and found that grief, like gravity, doesn’t negotiate.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said. “I don’t even know what this is. You deserve someone who… knows.”

Angela watched a sunbeam reach slowly across the tile. “Michael,” she said, “there are no experts. There are only honest men and the other kind. You’re the first kind. If all we ever have is coffee and a pew and prayers for each other’s children, I’ll still be grateful.”

He exhaled. It surprised him that the feeling underneath wasn’t relief, exactly, but a loosening of a strap he hadn’t noticed cutting into his shoulder.

“Would you like to come to Sunday dinner?” he asked, then panicked at his own daring. “No pressure. Just lasagna and my brother telling lies.”

Angela smiled. “I’d like that.”

---

Sunday arrived with kitchen noise and the ordered chaos of women who had long ago stopped asking permission to run the world. Daniel set out bottles. Nonna Rosa’s apron hung on the peg like a flag retired but not forgotten. Michael took a lasagna from the oven and burned his forearm and swore in a way that made the children pretend shock.

When Angela walked in with a cabbage salad and a bakery box, the Sieli clan did what it always did to kindness: they crowded it. Dominic kissed her cheek and asked if she knew how to cheat at cards. Marco offered wine and opinions on the Giants. Sofia watched her uncle’s posture like a nurse checks a pulse.

Dinner ran long and warm. Stories piled on stories. After coffee, Michael walked Angela to her car under a sky folding itself into indigo.

“You have a loud family,” she said, pleased.

“We’re Italian.”

“You’re American.”

“Both,” he conceded.

At the door, she reached up and kissed his cheek. It was gentle, a punctuation mark, not a new chapter. “Thank you,” she said. “Goodnight.”

He stood in the driveway long after her taillights turned into rumor. He knew then what he’d only suspected: his love for Teresa was not a room in a house with doors you could close and open; it was the house itself. You could invite people in, add rooms, repaint the trim. But you didn’t tear down the beams and claim you were starting fresh.

He also knew another truth, smaller but not trivial: he did not want to be married again. He wasn’t lonely, not in the way that breaks men. He had the vineyard, and God, and people who carried his name and the same stubborn mercy in their blood. He wanted a chair at the table and someone to save him a cinnamon roll in the courtyard once in a while. That would be enough.

---

Sofia tried, one last time, with the subtlety of a freight train.

They were pruning the north block, February sharp enough to make eyes water. She worked the spur with quick hands; he stood, secateurs paused, as if the vine had asked him a tricky question.

“She’s nice,” Sofia said.

“She is.”

“And you two… look like you enjoy each other.”

“We do.”

“And…?” She let the word be wide and kind.

He clicked the secateurs, snipped, let the cuttings drop. “And I’m okay,” he said. “I miss your aunt the way a man misses his shadow when the sun is too high. I talk to her sometimes when the rows are quiet. I’m not crazy. I just… love her. Still. And I love you all. That fills the house.”

Sofia swallowed, nodded, kept her eyes on the cane. “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” she said. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am,” he said, surprised to hear that it was true enough. “Not the loud kind. The other kind.”

She leaned over and bumped his shoulder with hers. “Fine. But I’m still putting you on the St. Valentine’s dance setup crew. You can carry chairs and judge the playlist.”

He groaned. “You’re cruel.”

“I’m efficient,” she said, grinning.

---

In April, Michael planted a fig tree near the kitchen, where Teresa used to stand and scold finches for their impertinence. He dug the hole the way he did most things—broad-shouldered, economical, steady. As he tamped the soil, Daniel came up the path with two beers, set them on the steps, and watched.

“Looks good,” Daniel said.

“She liked figs,” Michael replied.

Daniel watched him for a beat. “You okay, Mike?”

Michael nodded. He pressed his palm to the new soil. “I think so,” he said. “Some men remarry. Some men don’t. Some men date and decide it’s too much noise. I’m in the last group. But I’m not empty. I’ve got the rows, and the kids, and—” he waved vaguely at the house, the vines, the crucifix in the kitchen window—“everything.”

Daniel passed him a beer. “To everything,” he said.

“To enough,” Michael countered, clinking the bottle.

A few days later, he saw Angela in the courtyard and waved. She waved back, uncomplicated. They spoke of the parish rummage sale and a new family in the back pew with twin toddlers and the bravery that required. As they parted, she squeezed his hand.

“I like you just like this,” she said. “Don’t change on my account.”

“I won’t,” he said, and meant it with a clarity that felt like sunlight.

---

Summer found him the way it always did: dust in the cuffs, sweat in the collar, joy disguised as work. In the cool of late evening, he sat on the porch with Sofia and watched her scroll through photos of grandkids playing tag between barrels. The fig put out its first little leaves, bright as promises.

“Uncle Mike?” Sofia said once, eyes on the horizon that swallowed Fresno and gave it back again. “Are you lonely?”

He took his time. “Sometimes,” he said. “But not in a scary way. I miss one person. The rest of the table’s full.”

She took his hand. “Okay,” she said.

They watched the light leave the rows the way a tide leaves a beach—without argument, without apology. Owls woke. Somewhere, a child laughed and was shushed. The house breathed.

Michael lifted his bottle in a small toast to the absent and the present. “After the Amen,” he said, “you still have to do the dishes.”

Sofia laughed. “Profound.”

“True,” he said.

And when the night settled for good, he rose, turned off the porch light, and walked inside the house he hadn’t chosen so much as kept—widower, brother, uncle, veteran, vigneron, stubborn keeper of vows. Not alone. Not remarried. Somewhere between.

It was enough.

---

November 6, 2012 – Election Night, Obama’s Re-Election

The TV glowed again with images of jubilant crowds. “President Barack Obama has been re-elected, defeating Mitt Romney after a heated campaign…”

Michael shook his head in disbelief. “Four more years. God help us.”

Dominic muttered, “Shows you what this country’s becoming. They want handouts, not hard work.”

Sofia snapped back, “That’s insulting, Uncle Dom. People voted for him because they believe in something better. My generation — we see a man who looks like America. Mixed, complicated, not perfect but real. He gives us hope.”

Michael slammed his hand on the table. “Hope don’t pay the bills! Hope don’t keep a vineyard alive when water runs dry and taxes choke the life outta you. All that ‘Yes We Can’ is just words. Empty words.”

Sofia rose from her chair, her voice trembling but strong. “Maybe words matter, Uncle Mike. Maybe words are what carry people who don’t have land, who don’t have a family name, who don’t have a vineyard behind them. Words gave you a voice when our people were called dagos and wops. Don’t you dare tell me words don’t matter.”

The room fell silent. Michael’s jaw worked, but no reply came. Dominic looked away, staring at the old crucifix on the wall.

Outside, the vineyard rows stretched in silence under the moonlight, roots deep in the soil — as deep and tangled as the family itself.

 Selfies in the Vines

By 2016, the Sieli Vineyard had not only a website and a Facebook page, but Sofia had gone further. She set up something new — something that made Michael groan the minute he heard the name.

“Instagram,” Sofia announced at the kitchen table, holding up her phone like a priest with a relic.

Michael frowned. “What the hell’s an Instamatic?”

“Instagram,” she corrected. “It’s about pictures. People post photos, short videos. It’s huge. If we want younger customers, this is where they are.”

Dominic grunted, setting down his coffee cup. “Pictures? We already got pictures. They’re framed on the wall. What more do people need?”

Sofia smirked. “They don’t just want to see our pictures. They want to take their own. Out here, in the vineyard. With hashtags like ‘#winecountry’ and ‘#vintagevibes.’”

Michael threw up his hands. “Hashtags? I thought the pound sign was for dialing phones! Now people are tramping through rows of grapes just to take pictures of themselves? Ridiculous.”

But it wasn’t ridiculous. Within months, cars with out-of-state plates started pulling up to the vineyard. Young couples in floppy hats and sunglasses strolled into the vines, phones raised like divining rods. They snapped selfies, posed with the flagpole, even sat on the old tractor as if it were a museum piece.

One Saturday, Michael stormed into the yard, waving his arms. “Hey! This ain’t no carnival! You don’t just waltz in here with your lattes and start climbing on my equipment!”

The couple blinked at him, smiling nervously. “We’re big fans,” the woman said. “We saw your vineyard on Instagram. It’s beautiful! Could you take our picture?”

Michael sputtered. “Your picture? Lady, I’m trying to prune vines, not run a photo booth!”

From the porch, Sofia called out, “Uncle Mike, relax! They’re customers. They’ll buy wine after.”

And they did. They bought two cases.

Dominic, however, wasn’t convinced. One evening he sat at the table, muttering into his glass of red. “You know what bothers me most? They don’t come to taste the wine. They don’t care about the history, the land, the work. They come for… what do you call it, Sofia?”

“Content,” she answered with a grin.

“Content,” Dominic repeated bitterly. “A hundred and fifty years of sweat and blood, and now it’s reduced to content.”

Michael jabbed a finger toward her. “I told you back in ’99, this internet thing is a fad. And look — now the fad is takin’ pictures of yourself instead of living your life. Whole world’s gone mad.”

Sofia just smiled, tapping her phone. “And yet that madness just sold us three cases of merlot last week. Times change, Uncle Mike. You can fight it or you can use it. But it’s not going away.”

The kitchen fell into silence, except for the ding of Sofia’s phone. Another notification, another “like,” another stranger out there in the world staring at a picture of their vines.

Michael sighed, muttering into his wine. “Vines don’t grow any faster with likes.”

But when he saw the vineyard’s Instagram page later that week — the rows glowing gold at sunset, the flagpole standing tall, the family gathered for harvest — even Michael had to admit, if only to himself, that it did look beautiful.

 The Cousins from the South

It started, as many modern miracles do, with a message on Instagram.
A young woman named Luciana Sieli—her profile picture framed by the blue and white of an Argentine flag—had sent Sofia a note:

“Ciao, prima! I think we are family. My great-grandfather came from Liguria too, to Buenos Aires, around 1908. He said his cousins went to California. Could they be you?”

Sofia almost scrolled past it, thinking it a scam. But curiosity tugged at her, and within hours she was on a video call with faces that looked achingly familiar—dark eyes, expressive hands, the same half-smile her father used to make when amused.

By the following summer, Luciana and her brother Tomás arrived in Fresno. When they stepped out of the car at Sieli Vineyards, the valley heat hit them like an oven—but they smiled. “It feels like Mendoza,” Tomás said, gazing over the vines. “Different grapes, same sun.”

The family gathered on the porch that evening. Michael and Dominic, still getting used to the idea of being long-distance cousins to Spanish-speaking Italians, poured wine and tried their best at slow, deliberate English. The Argentines laughed warmly and replied in a melodic mix of Spanish and Italian, with bursts of Lunfardo slang that left the Californians bewildered but delighted.

“Somos los mismos, just in different lands,” Luciana said, touching her chest. “In Argentina, half the people have last names like ours—Sieli, Rossi, Bianchi, Esposito. You walk down the street and it sounds like Napoli or Genova, but with tango playing in the background.”

Sofia leaned forward. “You mean there are that many Italians in Argentina?”

Luciana nodded, her eyes bright. “More than half the country has some Italian blood. Millions! They came poor, like yours did—bricklayers, winemakers, fishermen—and they built Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba. My bisnonno always said: ‘We left Italy, but Italy never left us.’”

Dominic smiled at that. “Sounds like something our Nonno would’ve said.”

Tomás raised his glass. “To the Sielis—the ones who planted vines in two hemispheres, and whose roots go deeper than borders.”

They drank, and laughter spilled out across the rows of grapes that shimmered under the Fresno dusk. The cousins spoke of Argentina’s Italian festivals, of pizza and pasta more beloved there than in Rome itself. They talked about Mate tea, about football rivalries, about how Buenos Aires’ old Italian neighborhoods—La Boca, San Telmo, Barracas—still carried the rhythm of immigrant feet and the scent of tomato sauce and espresso.

“Most people think Italians only went to America through Ellis Island,” Sofia said, shaking her head in wonder. “They don’t realize how many went south.”

Luciana nodded. “They went everywhere. Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela. Millions. We made new homes but carried the same songs, the same saints, the same stubbornness.”

That night, under the California stars, the two families dined together—empanadas beside lasagna, Malbec poured next to Zinfandel. Luciana taught Sofia to say “che boludo” with proper Buenos Aires flair; Dominic tried to teach Tomás how to curse in Italian dialect.

When the night ended, Michael stood and raised his glass. “Our ancestors crossed oceans,” he said. “They didn’t speak the same languages, but they believed in the same thing—that family outlasts everything. Land. War. Even distance. Tonight, I think they’d be proud.”

Luciana smiled, tears glinting in her eyes. “And now we’ve come full circle.”

The vines rustled softly in the warm valley breeze, as if whispering in two languages—Italian and Spanish—one story told across continents, one family that had never truly been apart.

 The New Century 

Epigraph: Fresno Bee (Nov. 9, 2016) — “TRUMP ELECTED PRESIDENT: PROMISES WALL, JOBS, AND AMERICAN GREATNESS”

---

Election Night

The old farmhouse living room glowed with TV light. Wine glasses clinked nervously as counties turned red and blue across the map. When the networks finally called it, Dominic jumped up, pumping his fist.

“Finally!” he shouted. “A President who gets it. Borders, jobs, America first!”

Michael, now silver-haired but sharp as ever, stood and shook his cousin’s hand. “We’ve waited decades for someone who speaks plain. No more excuses, no more open borders. He’ll clean this mess up.”

Sofia sat rigid, her glass untouched. “He also talks about walls, about bans. Do you not hear the fear in his words?”

Dominic turned to her. “What I hear is a man who says what we’ve always said around this table: obey the law. Come legal, work legal, respect this country. That’s all we ask.”

---

The Vineyard’s Policy

In 2017, Dominic held a meeting in the barn, where workers gathered for contracts. A young Mexican father nervously handed over his green card.

Dominic clapped him on the shoulder. “Good. You’re legal, you’re here, you work, you get paid fair. That’s how it’s done.”

Later, over dinner, Dominic explained to the family. “We’re using E-Verify now. No more shadow labor. If you’re here, you’re documented. If you’re not, you’re out. That’s what Trump wants, that’s what we do.”

Sofia leaned forward. “And what if the system makes it nearly impossible for some? What if they’re good people, like Juan’s cousin, who worked here for years before the paperwork ran out?”

Michael cut in. “Then they fix their paperwork, or they go. We don’t cheat. Nonno Pietro raised us on dignity. That means law and order.”

Caterina’s great-granddaughter, Elena, muttered, “Dignity once meant hiding our accents. Now it means hiding behind rules.”

Dominic’s eyes flashed. “Dignity means doing things the right way, not the easy way. That’s the American way.”

---

Holidays and Hyphenates

That December, Dominic hung a giant American flag across the tasting room. Beneath it, a sign read: Christmas and Independence Day Are Enough.

At the Christmas dinner, Mike raised a toast. “This is America. No need for Cinco de Mayo, no Diwali, no Lunar New Year. We are one people, one flag, one nation. That’s what Trump says, and he’s right.”

Sofia laughed bitterly. “One people? Then why do you still make St. Joseph’s bread every March? Why do you light candles for San Gennaro? Why do we gather under sycamores to bless the vines?”

Michael frowned. “That’s family tradition, not politics.”

Sofia shot back, “It’s Italian tradition. And when others celebrate theirs, you call it divisive.”

The room grew tense. Lucia, frail and nearly ninety-five, cleared her throat. “Do not forget. Our saints are no less foreign than theirs. Once, Anglos mocked us for feasts. Now we mock others.”

Dominic tried to soften. “We’re not against tradition, Nonna. We’re against chaos. Too many flags, too many languages, and we stop being American.”

Lucia’s eyes gleamed. “Or perhaps we become more American than ever.”

The Year the World Stopped (2020)

The year 2020 began like any other in the Valley—warm mornings, restless wind, vines just waking from their winter sleep. By March, everything was different. The roads were empty, the air strangely clean, and the sound of silence had returned to Fresno, a silence not heard since the Dust Bowl.

At the vineyard, Michael and Dominic watched the news every night. The words came like bad weather: lockdown, quarantine, pandemic. At first, they dismissed it—“Just another flu,” Michael said, shaking his head. “We’ve seen worse.” But when the governor ordered everyone home, when Masses were suspended and neighbors started leaving groceries at the gate instead of shaking hands, the brothers’ disbelief turned to suspicion.

“This isn’t right,” Dominic muttered, pacing the kitchen. “The government shutting down churches, telling men they can’t work, can’t pray together? It’s not about health—it’s about control.”

Michael nodded, eyes fixed on the screen. “Trump’s our guy, sure—but he’s listening to the wrong people. The Deep State’s got their hooks in him. They’re using him, and he doesn’t even see it.”

Sofia, home from San Diego and working remotely, sighed. “Uncle, people are dying. You think every doctor, every nurse, every scientist in the world is part of some conspiracy?”

“They follow orders,” Michael said. “Just like soldiers. Doesn’t make ‘em saints.”

She set down her laptop. “In 1918, during the Spanish flu, they shut down churches, too. People wore masks then. It saved lives. This isn’t tyranny—it’s history repeating.”

Dominic grumbled, “You sound like CNN.”

“I sound like someone who doesn’t want Nonna’s generation to die,” Sofia said, her voice cracking. “For once, it’s not about politics—it’s about decency.”

The argument circled for weeks, like dust that refused to settle. The vineyard kept working in smaller crews. Farmhands stood six feet apart, faces hidden behind masks patterned with flags and prayers. Easter came and went without Mass. On the feast of Pentecost, Sofia prayed in the vineyard rows instead of the chapel, whispering the Gloria Patri into the wind.

Michael watched her from the porch. “Faith doesn’t need a building,” he said.

Sofia turned. “But it needs love,” she answered softly. “And love means protecting others, even when it costs us something.”

He didn’t reply. He just nodded, though he wasn’t sure whether in agreement or defeat.

The Meeting Before the Shutdown

Two days before the shutdown order took effect, the Sielis called everyone—family, foremen, and field workers—into the packing shed. The air was heavy with uncertainty, and the smell of crushed grape leaves mixed with dust and sanitizer. Michael stood on an overturned crate, hat in hand, his voice gruff but unsteady.

“They say we’ve got to stop,” he began. “The governor wants folks home. They call it a shutdown. I don’t like it. None of us do. But we’re going to do this the Sieli way—with honor and respect.” He looked over the faces of men and women who had worked beside him for decades. “Those considered ‘essential’ will stay on to keep the vines alive. The rest—your jobs will wait for you. No one’s losing their place here.”

Dominic added, “This vineyard’s weathered worse. Wars. Floods. Droughts. We’ll weather this too. You’ve got our word.”

Sofia, standing near the front with a clipboard, tried to smile through the tension. “We’ll make sure everyone’s covered. If you need groceries, medicine—call us. We’re family. We look out for each other.”

When the meeting ended, there were no handshakes—just nods, waves, and misty eyes. Workers stood apart but lingered, as if unwilling to let the moment end. Someone murmured, “See you soon.” Another answered, “God willing.”

As the crowd dispersed, Michael watched them go, his jaw set. “Can’t wait until this foolishness is over,” he muttered. But when Sofia looked up at him, he added softly, “They deserve better than fear.”

By the time the lockdowns eased, the country was restless. Signs went up in Fresno: Reopen California! Freedom Over Fear! Trucks rolled down the roads with flags fluttering, some for the nation, some for their grievances. When summer came, the headlines changed again—new names, new protests, cities burning. And once more, the Sieli family found themselves divided between loyalty and compassion, between the world they thought they knew and the one still struggling to be born.

 Fire in the Streets, Fire in the Vines

Epigraph: Fresno Bee, June 2, 2020 — “Downtown Protests Turn Violent Amid National Outcry”

The Summer of Ashes

When George Floyd’s death filled every television and phone screen, the San Joaquin Valley did not remain quiet. Protests reached Fresno’s streets, sometimes peaceful, sometimes breaking into chaos.

At the vineyard, Michael and Dominic—now in their seventies—sat at the kitchen table, arms crossed. Their faces, lined from decades of sun and labor, carried both weariness and fire.

Dominic slammed his fist. “The man resisted arrest! A tragedy, yes, but not murder. And now these Black Lives Matter mobs just want to loot and burn.”

Michael nodded sharply. “It’s an excuse. They don’t care about justice—they care about chaos. And the organizers? They’re pocketing donations while cities burn.”

Across the table, Sofia’s voice cut in. Calm but fierce. “You sound exactly like the Anglos who called Giuseppe and Antonio criminals for being Italian. Don’t you see it? This isn’t about looting—it’s about rooting out bad cops, about demanding dignity. The vineyard survived because our ancestors demanded dignity too.”

Younger cousins chimed in, some nodding with Sofia, others echoing Dominic and Michael. The room became a storm—voices overlapping, old resentments flaring.

The Riot Comes Home

A week later, protests surged downtown. Then, one night, a splinter group broke off. Windows shattered. Stores burned. And Sieli Vineyards, with its new tasting room and shopfront, became a target.

Spray paint scarred the walls: “No Justice, No Peace.” A display window shattered. Cases of wine vanished into the dark. By dawn, the patio was littered with glass, smoke still curling from a scorched olive oil shelf.

Dominic stood in silence, staring at the damage. His jaw quivered, but not from age—from fury. “You see?” he hissed. “This is what comes of mobs. They don’t want justice—they want destruction.”

Michael’s voice was low, almost prayerful. “They turned our vineyard into their battlefield.”

Sofia walked the rows in silence, tears burning her cheeks. To her, the vandalism was heartbreak, but not proof that the cause itself was rotten. “This isn’t everyone,” she whispered to Elena, a cousin her age. “A few bad apples don’t poison the whole tree.”

Lines in the Dust

That night, the family gathered again. The divide was sharper than ever.

Dominic’s voice thundered. “Enough excuses. We side with law and order. We always have. That’s why we still stand when others sold out or folded.”

Michael nodded. “If people want change, let them work for it the right way. Burning shops and vandalizing churches won’t bring respect—it kills it.”

Sofia shot back, her voice raw. “And silence kills more! Giuseppe and Antonio didn’t stay silent when they were spat on in mining camps. They stood with Mexicans and Chinese when no one else would. And now you would stand against the very spirit of their struggle?”

The room was silent. The vines outside rustled in the night wind.

The Soil’s Verdict

The vineyard bore the scars of the riot for months: a charred beam, glass ground into the dirt, paint that no scrubbing could fully erase. To Dominic, the marks were proof that mobs only sow chaos.

But Michael spoke differently. “I don’t excuse the killing of any innocent man,” he said one night as the family walked the rows. “I don’t excuse cruelty, or arrogance, or bad cops who shame the badge. But I also don’t excuse riots that burn businesses, churches, or vineyards built by sweat. If we want justice, we must find it in order, in law, in the hard work of building—not tearing down.”

To Sofia and the younger cousins, the scars were reminders of how easily justice could be twisted, how quickly the powerless were blamed. They refused to let one night define an entire movement.

Yet Michael’s words held weight. His stance was not born of hate, but of fear for the land, for the workers, for the family name carved out of dust and prejudice long ago. For him, law and order were not chains, but the trellis that held the vines upright.

The family still argued. They still disagreed. But they also listened.

And as always, the vines endured, whispering their quiet truth through the leaves:

The soil remembers.

 The Monuments and the Memory

The summer heat lingered longer than usual, and tempers lingered with it. By late August, the country had found a new argument—statues. From coast to coast, bronze soldiers, generals, and explorers were being pulled down by ropes or boxed up by city crews. News anchors spoke in tones half scandalized, half exhilarated.

At the Sieli vineyard, the debate played out not in the streets but around the long kitchen table, where generations gathered for coffee after Sunday Mass—back now, with limited pews and sanitizer at the door.

Dominic clicked the remote, freezing a news image of protestors surrounding a statue. “There it is again,” he said, jabbing the air with the remote. “Another one gone. Robert E. Lee this time. What’s next? Washington? Jefferson? Maybe they’ll melt down Lincoln too, just to be fair.”

Michael shook his head, his voice low but tight. “They say it’s about justice, but it’s about erasing the country. You start tearing down the past, you won’t have anything left to stand on.” He looked at Sofia. “You of all people should understand that—our family came here to build, not to destroy.”

Sofia set her cup down carefully. “Uncle Mike, nobody’s trying to destroy the country. We’re trying to make it honest. Those statues—they’re not teaching history. They’re glorifying people who fought to keep others enslaved.”

Dominic leaned forward. “So we pretend they never existed? Pretend half the country didn’t die over that war?”

“That’s not what I said,” Sofia replied, keeping her tone calm. “Teach about them. In books, in museums, in classrooms. But don’t put them on pedestals in town squares like heroes. There’s a difference between remembrance and reverence.”

Michael frowned. “You pull down one statue, you start pulling at the flag next. Don’t tell me it’s different. It’s all the same crowd—same slogans, same hate for what this country is.”

Sofia looked at her uncle for a long moment. “Maybe what this country is has to grow,” she said softly. “The flag can stay. The ideals can stay. But the lies—those have to go.”

Dominic snorted. “They’ll come for Columbus next, mark my words.”

“They already have,” Sofia said. “And honestly? Maybe they should. The man enslaved and killed people. Why are we still pretending he discovered a place where people already lived?”

Michael’s jaw tightened. “Without Columbus, none of us would be here. He’s part of our story as Italians. You start canceling him, you’re canceling us.”

“Then we tell the whole story,” Sofia said. “Not just the good parts that make us feel proud. The truth makes us stronger, not weaker.”

For a while, no one spoke. The TV carried on without them—clips of city crews loading statues into flatbed trucks, interviews with historians, protestors chanting in front of marble men on horses.

Dominic finally broke the silence. “You know what I see when I look at those statues? Stone and metal. What matters more is what’s inside people’s hearts. And what I see now,” he said, shaking his head, “is hate, on both sides.”

Sofia folded her arms. “Then maybe it’s time we stopped worshiping the dead and started helping the living.”

Outside, the vines swayed in a faint evening wind. The vineyard had seen empires rise and fall, wars begin and end, beliefs shift like the seasons. And though they stood on Californian soil, the arguments of the nation—over race, history, memory, and meaning—ran through the Sieli family like roots twisting beneath the rows.

The old men stayed certain. The younger generation stayed hopeful. Between them lay the same thing that had always tied and divided them both—love for a country they could neither abandon nor completely agree on.

As the argument over Confederate statues began to cool, another fire lit up the news feeds—and this one struck closer to the Sieli heart.

The camera on the local news showed it first: a crane lifting a bronze Columbus from the center of Fresno’s Italian Heritage Plaza, workers in reflective vests guiding the ropes. The mayor said it was for “public safety.” Protesters had threatened to topple it. The city said it would be stored “temporarily.” Everyone knew what that meant.

Michael stood in front of the television, jaw tight. “They’re taking him down,” he muttered. “Columbus. The man who started it all. The first Italian to cross an ocean. What’s next—San Francisco? Los Angeles? They’ll rename the whole map before they’re done.”

Dominic crossed his arms. “He’s a symbol, Mike. Not just for Italians—hell, for all of Western civilization. A man who risked everything for discovery. And now they call him a murderer, a colonizer. They’re spitting on their own history.”

Sofia leaned against the counter, arms folded, calm but firm. “He was a colonizer. And his men did murder people. You can honor your roots without pretending history was perfect.”

Michael turned, eyes narrowing. “You’re missing the point, Sof. Nobody’s saying the man was a saint. But if not for Columbus, none of this—” he gestured toward the vineyard, the old oak table, the flags by the door—“none of it would exist. The country itself wouldn’t exist. He’s part of our story, whether people like it or not.”

“He’s part of a story,” Sofia corrected, “but not all of it. Columbus didn’t discover America. He landed in the Caribbean, enslaved the people who lived there, and helped start a system that wiped out entire cultures. That’s not something you put on a pedestal. That’s something you study.”

Dominic scoffed. “You talk like a professor. The man’s been dead five hundred years. Judging him by today’s standards is cheap and easy.”

“Then at least be honest about who he was,” Sofia said. “He wasn’t even ‘Italian’ the way people think. Italy didn’t exist yet. He lived part of his life in Genoa, sure, but he called himself Cristóbal Colón, worked for Spain, married a Portuguese woman, gave his sons Spanish names. He spoke Spanish. He was more Iberian than Italian.”

Michael slammed his palm lightly against the table. “That’s not what matters. He’s ours now. He became a hero for Italians in America—for immigrants who were beaten in the streets and called dagos and wops. Columbus Day wasn’t about him—it was about us. About saying we belong here. About pride.”

Sofia’s voice softened. “I know that, Uncle. But pride isn’t the same as truth. You can’t build identity on half a story. If we want to honor our people, let’s honor the ones who came here and worked the land, who built vineyards and railroads and cities—not the man who opened the door to centuries of suffering.”

Dominic turned toward Michael, eyes glinting. “Maybe we can save him. The city doesn’t want the statue? We’ll take it. Put it here, at the vineyard. He belongs with us.”

Sofia’s head snapped up. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?” Michael said. “It’s history. We’ll put up a plaque—say it’s part of Italian heritage. It’s private property; no one can touch it. Let them protest in town if they want. Out here, we’ll keep what’s ours.”

Sofia stared, disbelieving. “What’s ours? A bronze man with a sword and a map? You’d bring that here—to a vineyard built by immigrants who believed in freedom? You’d turn this place into a museum for denial?”

“Into a place for context,” Michael countered. “They want to erase him from the world—we’ll keep him where he can be seen and remembered.”

Sofia shook her head. “You can’t save the past by dragging it into the present. You just chain yourself to it.”

The kitchen went quiet except for the hum of the old refrigerator. Outside, the vines swayed in the evening wind, rows of green against the golden haze. On the muted TV, another statue came down in another city. A protestor raised a sign: History belongs to everyone.

Michael turned off the screen and leaned back. “Maybe. But if everyone owns it, nobody protects it.”

Sofia looked out the window toward the vineyard—the same soil that had outlasted drought, fire, and division. “Maybe that’s the point,” she said. “Maybe history isn’t something to protect. Maybe it’s something to finally understand.”

Dominic sighed, rubbing his temples. “We’re all just trying to hold on to something, Sof.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “But maybe it’s time to hold on to each other instead.”

The old men said nothing. Outside, the vines rustled softly—witnesses, as always, to the arguments of the living.

The Bitter Harvest

By mid-2020, the vineyard had survived drought, flood, riots, and fire—but the hardest storm, Michael once said, was the kind that began inside your own family.

It started quietly, as most heartbreaks do.

Marco, Sofia and Daniel’s eldest son, had gone off to college in Sacramento with every blessing the family could offer. Smart, athletic, and good-looking, he was the golden child—the one everyone said had inherited his great-grandfather Pietro’s charm and Michael’s steady work ethic. He was supposed to take the Sieli name into the next century, to one day manage the vineyard when his uncles were gone.

But the city had a way of swallowing small-town dreams.

At first, the change came slowly. Missed phone calls. Shortened visits. Excuses about exams or extra shifts at the restaurant. When he came home for Christmas his sophomore year, his eyes seemed tired, his laugh a little forced. He spent more time on the back porch with his phone than around the dinner table.

Sofia brushed it off. “He’s just stressed,” she said. “College does that.”

But Michael noticed the trembling hands, the hollow stare, the way Marco picked at his food and avoided eye contact. One night, after everyone had gone to bed, he went out to the barn and found him sitting on an overturned crate, breathing fast, sweat shining on his forehead.

“Marco,” he said quietly. “You’re using something.”

Marco froze. “It’s nothing, Uncle Mike. Just something to help me study. Everyone does it.”

Michael stepped closer, his voice rough. “What is it? Pills? Coke?”

Marco’s jaw clenched. “Adderall at first. Then a friend—he had something stronger. Just a bump to keep me awake. I swear I’ve got it under control.”

Michael’s voice cracked like a whip. “That’s what every junkie says before he loses everything.”

“Don’t call me that!” Marco snapped. “I’m not some street addict!”

The shouting drew the rest of the family. Sofia came running, Daniel close behind, followed by Dominic who had been helping bottle Zinfandel for the holidays. 

“What’s happening?” Dominic asked.

Michael turned, red-faced. “He’s hooked. Our nephew’s on meth or worse.”

Daniel’s breath caught. “Marco, tell me that’s not true.”

Marco broke. “It was just for finals! I didn’t—” He stopped when he saw the look in his mother’s eyes—love and disbelief twisting together.

Sofia’s voice shook. “We’ll get you into rehab. I don’t care what it costs.”

And she meant it. The next weeks were a blur of phone calls, insurance battles, and waiting lists. They found a program in Clovis—faith-based, structured, with a detox wing that smelled of bleach and despair.

But the vineyard felt emptier now. Every vine seemed to droop as if mourning one of its own. Dominic said it out loud one evening as they checked the irrigation lines. “If Marco doesn’t come back from this,” he muttered, “I don’t know if this place survives. The vineyard needs a Sieli to care for it—or it dies with us.”

Michael didn’t answer. He just stared at the rows in the moonlight and thought about the years he’d spent fighting enemies overseas, only to face a worse one at home.

---

Months Later

When Marco came home from rehab, he was twenty pounds lighter and moved like a man twice his age. His hands shook when he tried to tie the vines. He didn’t talk much—he just worked, one task at a time, as if trying to earn back each breath.

Rehab had been brutal. The first week, he’d gone through withdrawal—sweats, nausea, shaking so bad he had to be strapped to the bed. They told him later he’d screamed in his sleep for two nights straight. A counselor named Javier, a recovering addict himself, had sat with him through it. “This doesn’t end when the shaking stops,” he’d said. “That’s just your body quitting. The rest of you takes longer.”

He’d spent three months in therapy, group sessions, and morning prayers. He’d written letters of apology to his parents that he never sent. By the time they came to pick him up, his voice was softer, but his eyes were clearer.

Back home, the family gathered under the sycamores for dinner. The meal was simple—bread, wine, and roasted vegetables—but to them, it tasted like hope.

Dominic poured a glass of the new vintage and raised it. “To new beginnings.”

Michael’s voice was quiet but firm. “You can’t control what breaks you,” he said, looking at Marco, “but you can choose what you grow after.”

Outside, the vines shimmered under the forgiving sun—strong, scarred, and alive.

Never Again

The church still smelled of incense and gunpowder. Days had passed, but Michael swore he could still hear the echo — the crack of the rifle, the shouts, the screams.

The parish of St. Agnes had always been a refuge: sunlight through stained glass, children fidgeting in pews, old women murmuring rosaries in rhythm with their breath. Now, yellow tape crisscrossed the entrance, and the altar was flecked with memories no one wanted to keep.

Michael sat at his kitchen table that night, the light from a single bulb above him. His hands, veined and shaking, still bore faint specks of blood from where he had shielded a parishioner — Maria Perez, a widow who had sung in the choir for decades. She had survived because of him. Others hadn’t.

Sofia came quietly through the screen door, setting her keys on the counter. Her eyes were red from crying. “Uncle Mike,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

He didn’t look up. “I’m not. I’ve got ghosts enough for company.”

She sat across from him. The air smelled faintly of vinegar and old coffee. “It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done. The man had armor, a rifle—”

Michael slammed his hand on the table. The sound cracked through the kitchen like thunder. “Don’t tell me that! I’m a man, Sof. That’s supposed to mean something. You defend others. You protect your people. That’s the job. The only job. And when the time came, I froze.”

His voice quivered, but he wouldn’t let it break. Men like Michael didn’t cry — not in front of women, not even in front of God.

“You saved Maria,” Sofia said, her voice trembling. “You threw yourself over her. She’s alive because of you.”

He shook his head. “And Father Alvarez isn’t. Neither is that usher, or that boy with the candle. I had a chance — a second, maybe two — to rush him. But I didn’t. I just stood there. Like a coward.”

“Uncle Mike—”

He rose suddenly, pushing the chair back. “No. Don’t ‘Uncle Mike’ me. I’ve fought in wars. I’ve been shot at before. But this—this was my church. My home. Evil walked through the front door and I froze. Never again.”

She stood. “What do you mean?”

He looked out the window, the vineyard silver under the moonlight. “I’m getting a gun,” he said simply. “A permit. A CCW. Whatever it takes. I won’t be defenseless again.”

Sofia’s eyes widened. “No, Uncle Mike. That’s not the answer. You think more guns make us safer? They don’t! They make things worse.”

Michael turned sharply. “Oh, here we go. Guns don’t kill people, Sof — people do. A gun doesn’t go off by itself. You blame the tool instead of the man holding it.”

Sofia crossed her arms. “We don’t want to take your guns away. We just don’t want the wrong people having them. Gun control works in other countries—”

He cut her off, raising his voice. “Other countries don’t have our freedoms! That’s the difference. You start letting them chip away at the Second Amendment, and soon we’re all helpless — against criminals, and against a government that stops fearing its own people.”

“Come on, Uncle Mike,” Sofia said, exasperated. “That’s just NRA talk. Nobody’s trying to turn this into a dictatorship.”

He scoffed. “You're damn right it's NRA talk! You know I'm a member. You think tyranny shows up waving a flag and announcing itself? No. It starts small — one regulation, one ‘reasonable restriction’ at a time, until only the bad guys are armed and the rest of us are waiting for permission to live.”

Sofia’s tone softened, but the fire in her eyes didn’t fade. “And what about all the people dying, Uncle Mike? The kids in schools, the families in grocery stores, the people in churches? This is gun violence. You say guns don’t kill people — but without them, those people would still be alive.”

Michael’s hands tightened on the back of the chair. “And if someone in that church had a gun, maybe they’d still be alive too.”

The silence that followed was thick, painful. The only sound was the clock ticking on the wall and the faint hum of crickets outside.

Finally, Michael exhaled and sat down again, rubbing his face. “I’m not some fool looking to play cowboy,” he said quietly. “Jesus, Sof — I’m a veteran. I know when to shoot and when not to. I respect the law. But I’ll never stand empty-handed again.”

Sofia looked at him, tears brimming. “You’re not empty-handed, Uncle Mike. You have faith. You have family.”

He stared at the small crucifix on the wall, its shadow long in the lamplight. “Faith doesn’t stop bullets,” he said softly.

Sofia reached across the table, resting her hand on his. “No, but it can stop hate.”

Michael didn’t answer right away. He just looked at her — his niece, the girl he’d helped raise after her parents died, now standing across from him as both comfort and conscience.

“Maybe,” he said finally. “But if it happens again… I’ll be ready. And if that makes me the bad guy, then so be it.”

The Night the Vineyard Stood Still

The night was too still for Fresno. Even the crickets seemed uneasy, the wind holding its breath between the vines. Michael Sieli, now in his early seventies, had taken to locking every door twice since the church shooting. The old shotgun stayed by his bed. The pistol, newly purchased and legal, rested in the drawer by the kitchen table.

Sofia had argued about it for months.
“You can’t stop every bad thing with a gun,” she’d said.
“And you can’t stop one without it,” he’d replied.

That night, the argument ended with the sound of breaking glass.

It came from the back door—sharp, unmistakable. The dogs barked first, their nails skittering on the tile. Michael was up in an instant, heart pounding like it had when he was twenty. But this time his body didn’t move as fast. By the time he reached the hallway, two men were already inside—dark clothes, masks, gloved hands.

“Stay down, old man,” one barked, shoving Michael backward. His shoulder hit the table, and pain shot through his ribs. He gasped, trying to find breath and balance, but the second man was already rifling through the drawers.

“What do you want?” Michael managed, his voice ragged. “There’s money in the office—take it.”

“We’ll find it,” the first said, pinning him down with a knee to the chest. “Don’t be a hero.”

Sofia had been upstairs, half-asleep, scrolling through her phone when the sound reached her—the crash, the shouting, her uncle’s voice. She froze. Then she remembered the drawer. The one she had cursed every time she saw him open it. The gun.

Her hands trembled as she opened it now.

She moved through the hall barefoot, heart pounding against her ribs like wings. From the kitchen doorway, she saw the man holding Michael down.

The invader shoved Michael aside and turned toward Sofia, his shadow cutting across the kitchen floor.

“You need to put that gun down before you hurt yourself, sweetie,” he said, his voice thick with mockery, the kind that dripped from men who thought fear was weakness.

“Just stay there,” Sofia warned, her voice trembling, the gun shaking in her hands. Her heart hammered so hard she could hear it in her ears. Uncle Mike had taught her how to use a gun—against her better judgment, against everything she believed—but at that moment, all she could think about was surviving.

The man took another step, slow and deliberate, testing her.

“I said stay there!”

But he didn’t.

He lunged forward—and Sofia fired.

Once. The sound was deafening, slamming against the walls like thunder in a closed canyon. The man staggered, looked down at his chest as if he didn’t quite believe what he saw, then started forward again.

She fired a second time.

He stopped mid-stride, mouth open, breath caught somewhere between rage and disbelief. Then he crumpled to the floor, the impact echoing through the room.

The smell of gunpowder mixed with the vineyard air drifting through the broken door. Sofia stood frozen, her arms stiff, her body trembling violently. The ringing in her ears made the silence feel endless.

“Oh my God…” she whispered, lowering the gun. “I killed him.”

Michael, still winded but alive, pushed himself up from the floor. His ribs ached with every breath. He walked slowly toward his niece, hands raised—not to startle her, not to add to the shock.

“You had to,” he said softly, reaching out and gently taking the gun from her hands. “You didn’t have a choice.”

Her eyes were wide, hollow, as if her soul hadn’t caught up to her body yet. “I shot him, Uncle Mike. I shot him twice.”

“You saved my life,” he said, steady now, though his voice cracked around the edges. “You did what you had to do. Look at me, Sofia.”

She didn’t move.

“Sofia, look at me,” he said again, firmer this time.

Her gaze lifted to meet his.

“You did nothing wrong.”

---

 Roots in the Storm (2020–2025)

Epigraph: Fresno Bee, November 9, 2020 — “A NATION DIVIDED — BIDEN WINS, BUT TENSION REMAINS”

---

A Country, A Choice

The night the 2020 election results came in, the farmhouse was a battlefield of silence and murmurs. Dominic sat on the old oak chair near the fireplace, arms folded, staring at the TV.

Mike paced behind him. “I can’t believe they went that way.”

Sofia stood by the window, arms crossed. “America chose a different path. That doesn’t mean it lost its soul.”

Mateo, leaning against the doorframe, whispered, “Maybe it just wanted a reset.”

Caterina, older and still full of quiet strength, placed a hand on Dominic’s shoulder. “Remember, power changes hands. What matters is how we live after change.”

---

Border and Labor

In early 2021, new federal policies tightened border enforcement. The Sieli vineyard's office received memos reminding them to run E-Verify checks and maintain strict compliance. No undocumented labor could be tolerated.

Dominic gathered supervisors in the barn. “From now on, no exceptions. Green cards or work visas only. We obey the law — not halfway, not loosely.”

A young foreman hesitated. “But Señor Sieli, what about José? He’s been with us ten seasons. His paperwork lapsed only by a month.”

Dominic’s face hardened. “I’m sorry, but rules are rules. He can reapply — but until then, he can’t work here. No room for loopholes.”

Sofia watched from the rafters, jaw tight. Later that night, she confronted Dominic in his study.

“You’re punishing good men for our fear. José has sweat in these rows. He belongs more than some businessmen who never lift a tool.”

Dominic glared. “And I’m protecting the vineyard — and our name. One violation, rumors start, laws come down. We can’t give cover to disorder.”

Sofia’s eyes moistened. “We built everything from disorder. It’s easier to deny who we were than face what we are becoming.”

He didn’t answer.

Later that same week, Michael sat with Sofia on the farmhouse porch, the glow of the valley’s suburban lights creeping closer every year. Rows of vines stretched before them, but beyond the fences, rooftops and streetlamps glittered where orchards used to be.

He exhaled heavily, swirling the last of his wine in the glass. “Sometimes I envy them,” he admitted.

“Who?” Sofia asked, though she already knew.

“The ones who took the money. The Mazzinis, the Carluccis, even the Ortegas down the road. They sold out in the ’80s and ’90s, built new houses in the foothills, lived easy. Meanwhile we fought droughts, debts, the city breathing down our necks. Maybe we were the fools, clinging to a past that doesn’t pay.”

Sofia leaned forward, her voice steady. “And what do they have now? Their names on cul-de-sac signs. Their land buried under asphalt. Their stories forgotten except in a realtor’s brochure. Do you want that for us?”

Michael was silent.

She placed her hand on his. “We don’t carry the land as a burden, Uncle Michael. The land carries us. That’s why we’re still here. That’s why they’ll remember us, not as a street name, but as a vineyard.”

Michael looked out across the rows, the vines shifting in the evening breeze. For a moment he saw both futures—the easy sellout, and the harder survival. And though the weight of the latter pressed on his shoulders, he knew Sofia was right.

---

Cultural Enforcement

By 2022, Dominic and Mike began insisting the family publicly observe only “American holidays” in their public vineyard events. No more bocce nights tied to San Gennaro, no more St. Joseph altars at harvest.

At the annual fall tasting festival, Mike went on stage and told the crowd: “Here, we celebrate Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Memorial Day — the holidays that unify us as Americans. No flags, no foreign festivals — we stand under one banner.”

Sofia, offstage, clenched her fists. She whispered to Elena, “They erase us even as they speak proud.”

That evening, at the dinner table, she confronted her uncles. “You say we honor America. But you cage our past. You expect assimilation but preserve privilege.”

Mike answered coolly. “We preserve what’s necessary for unity. Too many identities fracture what should be one people.”

Sofia countered, “So our traditions fracture, but yours don’t? You eat Nonna’s pasta in silence. You turn off Saint day prayers in the vineyards. Hypocrisy smells bitter.”

The others looked away.

---

The 2024 Election Cycle

In 2024, as campaigning ramped up, Dominic and Mike quietly backed candidates emphasizing border enforcement, small government, and law and order. They didn’t parade signs, but they contributed, they whispered endorsements, they leaned into local conservative clubs.

At a small fundraiser in Clovis, Mike met a candidate and slipped him a check. “Keep Fresno safe. Keep California strong,” he said.

In the car afterward, Dominic grinned. “Finally, someone with the backbone to protect what we built.”

Sofia, in the back seat, said nothing.

False Allies

A week later, Michael attended a city council meeting downtown. The agenda was water rights, but the air was thick with politics.

“Mr. Sieli!” a man called across the room. Michael turned to see a tall, sharp-suited stranger approaching, a smirk on his lips.

“You’re that Grand Poohbah or something, right?” Michael asked, half-mocking.

The man laughed easily. “Grand Dragon,” he corrected. “And I think we have something in common.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s that?”

“We both don’t like undesirables.”

That word made Michael’s jaw tighten. His grandfather’s stories flooded back—signs in San Francisco saloons reading No Dagos Allowed, immigration quotas branding Italians as “undesirable,” whispers in Fresno that Catholics weren’t “real Americans.”

“Undesirables?” Michael asked, feigning ignorance though his eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” the man said smoothly. “You know… minorities. We don’t want them replacing us. America should be for Americans.”

Michael’s voice cut like gravel. “I don’t want people entering this country illegally and disrespecting it. But I have nothing against minorities themselves. And I know your kind—you hated Italians and Catholics once, too. In a way, you still do. You just want to use us now, exploit us. But you’ll never see us as equals. You'll never really respect us. And frankly, I don’t want your respect.”

The Grand Dragon’s smile did not waver. “Mr. Sieli, whether you like it or not, when people look at you, they see me. To them you’re just another racist. If you don’t join us, if you don’t accept us as friends, then you’ll be nothing but a lone racist.”

Michael stood, chair scraping the floor. He spoke calmly but loudly enough for the room to hear.

“I don’t want you as friends.”

He walked out, leaving the man’s smirk behind. 

---

The Storm of 2025

When 2025 brought drought, heat waves, and wildfire smoke pushing across the valley, the vineyard felt the pressure. Harvests shrank; insurance premiums rose; federal deregulatory moves promised relief for farm businesses.

At the vineyard commission meeting, Mike spoke before county officials. “We need incentives, tax cuts, fewer regulations. Let the state trust farmers, not punish them. The government should help us keep the land alive.”

A local activist confronted him. “But those tax breaks come from cutting social programs and pushing others out.”

Mike squared his shoulders. “I believe in building, not tearing down. We protect our property, obey laws, hire only legal workers. That’s how a society survives.”

---

Protest, Pushback

In June 2025, a protest called No Kings Day swept across U.S. cities, including Fresno’s downtown square. Organized by groups resisting authoritarian policies, the marchers chanted, “No king but the people!” 

Sofia joined with a small cohort, walking with signs: Roots Not Walls; History Matters; Respect All Workers.

Dominic watched them pass the vineyard trucks, anger flickering. He muttered, “They attack order itself.”

Later that night, he confronted Sofia at home. “You joined the mob? You with signs?”

Sofia stood firm. “I joined the voice you won’t hear. I marched for Filipinos, Mexicans, Black farmworkers—not because they’re illegal, but because they are human. Because they pick what you sell.”

He turned away.

---

A New Fracture

By late 2025, the family’s split had become public. Customers complained after tasting-room staff removed a Day of the Dead display. Others praised them for “keeping it American.”

Elena and Mateo began hosting a parallel event: Heritage Harvest Festival, combining Italian feasts, mariachi sets, Hmong dances, and Filipino street food in the vineyard. They invited the public, promising an inclusive celebration under the vines.

Mike frowned when he saw the flyer. “This splits our brand. Too many flags, too many faces.”

Sofia replied, “Or it restores it. We were never a single flag. We are many roots.”

At the festival’s opening, Dominic appeared in the crowd, arms folded. But when Elena called him forward to raise a toast, he hesitated—then raised his glass, stiffly: To the harvest. To the land. To those who work it well.

Sofia whispered, “It’s something.”

Dominic’s face softened.

The Procession Returns

The morning of the festa dawned golden and still, the Central Valley light slanting through a haze that smelled faintly of dust, incense, and vineyards. Sofia Sieli-Morales, now in her early fifties, tied her granddaughter’s ribbon and checked her grandson’s rosary for the third time. “Don’t drop it this year,” she said with a smile that was half sternness, half nostalgia.

Her husband, Daniel Morales, adjusted his sunglasses and surveyed the crowded parish parking lot. “I haven’t seen this many people at church since Easter,” he said. “Your uncles are going to have a field day.”

“They’ll survive,” Sofia replied. “They’ve been surviving Catholic guilt and family pride for seventy years. A procession won’t kill them.”

The parish grounds buzzed with color and motion—women in lace veils arranging flowers around the statue of Our Lady, altar servers swinging thuribles that filled the air with a sweet fog of myrrh and frankincense, and the brass band warming up under the carport with bright notes of When the Saints Go Marching In.

The Knights of Columbus stood at attention in their plumed hats. Someone started the first verse of Ave Maria, and the crowd hushed.

At the edge of the crowd, Michael and Dominic stood watching, their arms folded, hats low against the sunlight.
“I don’t get it,” Michael muttered. “We go to Mass every Sunday. Isn’t that enough?”
Dominic nodded. “All this… pageantry. You’d think we were back in Sicily in 1890.”

Sofia turned toward them, her expression soft but firm. “You’re not seeing what this really is,” she said. “Our great-grandparents helped build this parish. Nonna Rosa marched in these feasts when Fresno was still fields and shacks. This is about remembering who we are.”

Michael frowned. “I don’t have anything against it. I just never saw the point of keeping all these old traditions alive.”

“That’s the point,” Sofia said. “So they don’t die.”

The priest raised his hand, and the procession began—Our Lady lifted on the shoulders of men from the parish, veiled women scattering rose petals, children waving flags of Italy, Mexico, the Vatican, and the United States. The brass band struck up the first hymn, and the faithful moved out into the streets of Fresno, chanting the rosary as they went.

The parade wound past cafés and auto shops, through the old neighborhoods where the descendants of Italian, Portuguese, and Mexican farmers still kept Marian statues in their yards. Crowds gathered along the sidewalks. Some clapped and took photos, some bowed their heads. But others shouted from across the street:
“Free Palestine!”
“Abortion is healthcare!”
“You’re all haters!”

"Love is love!"

"Trans rights are human rights!"

Little Lucia, Elena’s daughter, faltered in her steps. Sofia reached for her hand. “Keep walking,” she whispered. “We walk for God, not for applause.”

As the hymn rose—Ave Maria, gratia plena—Sofia felt a strange kinship with ghosts. She pictured Giuseppe and Antonio in the 1860s, marching through the dusty streets of old Fresno while Ezekiel Crowe and his men shouted “Papists!” and “Idol-worshippers!” from the alleys. The insults were different now, but the spirit behind them was the same.

When they reached the church again, the bells rang out and the priest lifted the monstrance. The late-afternoon sun caught the gold, throwing light across the kneeling crowd. Voices rose together in prayer—in English, Spanish, Tagalog, and Italian.

Michael and Dominic stood at the back, watching their niece kneel beside Daniel, Elena, Marco, and their children. The music swelled; a wave of sound and memory rolled over the parish like something ancient rediscovered.

As the sun dipped behind the vineyards, Sofia looked back at her uncles and smiled. The same song that once echoed through the 1860s now drifted through the warm Fresno air—voices of the living answering the faith of the dead, saints and sinners marching together again through time.

 The Raid

The valley morning was unusually quiet, the vines trembling under a low fog. Michael Sieli stood on the gravel drive when the government SUVs rolled up, their black paint slick with dew. Men in tactical gear stepped out, masks covering their faces, radios crackling. ICE.

“Did you really have to raid my place like this?” Michael demanded later on after it was over, his voice hoarse from a sleepless night. His hands were clenched, but not from fear—anger, pride, maybe shame. “Am I really some type of gangster or terrorist?”

One of the agents approached, mask lowered. “We’re just following protocol, Mr. Sieli.”

Michael stared at him. His jaw tightened. “Ya know, if you came to me civilly—if you just asked—I would’ve cooperated. I’d have shown you my books, turned over the illegal workers. I wouldn’t want to, but I obey the law. I respect what you do. But this—” he gestured at the rifles, the trucks, his niece in handcuffs near the SUV—“this was unnecessary. You better hope my niece is not hurt, or so help me God—”

The agent’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”

“No,” Michael said, steady now. “I respect you. I really do. But my respect only goes so far. My family is first. Always.”

The two men locked eyes, a silence longer than gunfire, heavier than orders. For one moment, respect replaced suspicion.

Finally, the agent turned. “Let her go.”

His colleague stiffened. “What?”

“You heard me. Release her.”

“But she assaulted you, a federal agent!”

The agent shook his head. “She only gave me a shove. I’m not pressing charges.”

Grudgingly, the handcuffs came off. Sofia stumbled forward, rubbing her wrists, fury spilling from her eyes. She ran to her uncle but turned back to shout, “You should be ashamed of yourselves! You’re all fasc—”

“Stop!” Michael barked. His voice cracked like a whip. “Just stop.”

The SUVs pulled away, engines rumbling down the road. Dust settled back into the vineyard rows.

Sofia rounded on her uncle, tears mixing with rage. “You see that, Uncle Michael? That is fascism! That is wrong! We just want that to end, that’s all!”

Michael wiped a hand over his weathered face. “Then people should come to this country the right way,” he snapped. “And when they apply for work here, they shouldn’t lie to me.”

He turned to his brother, Dominic, who had been silent through it all, arms crossed at the edge of the porch. “Dom, we need to go over our records. See why the system isn’t working.”

Dominic nodded, his face hard, unreadable.

---

 Roots vs. Boundaries

That autumn, amidst smoke and low yields, the two sides stood in the vineyard.

Dominic said quietly, “I believe in rule. In order. In protecting what we have.”

Sofia answered, “But I believe in memory. In welcoming roots. In seeing hands, not borders.”

Mateo touched a vine. “We live between fences and soil. One may protect; one must remember.”

They stood in silence as dusk fell, vines rustling under the dusty sky, roots deep in the dark earth, waiting for the harvest to come again.

Present Day, 2025

By late 2025, survival meant change. To keep the vineyard in operation—and to keep buyers and developers at bay—the Sielis had been forced to expand and diversify. They turned the land into more than a place for grapes: it became a destination. Wine tours and tastings. A retail shop selling olive oil and honey. A restaurant that filled the air with garlic and herbs. Weddings under the sycamores, festivals in the fall, concerts strung with lights across the rows. Every addition was a shield, proof to the city that the vineyard was not just surviving, but thriving.

By autumn, the vineyard was no longer just a vineyard. The old barn had been restored with wide glass doors and a polished stone patio. A small restaurant and wine shop now overlooked the rows, where guests sipped Sieli vintages under strings of lights. Tour buses parked where mules once rested, brides posed in front of the sycamores, and music drifted through the air on weekends when weddings or festivals filled the property.

Michael stood at the edge of the vineyard with Sofia beside him. He had expected to feel uneasy about this transformation, but instead he felt something else: relief. The vines still rooted the family’s story in this soil, but now they carried the weight of the future too.

Across the valley, he could see rooftops and cul-de-sacs stretching where vineyards once stood. Developers had paved over entire orchards, swallowing up farms whose names lived on only in street signs and HOA newsletters. The Sieli vineyard had been surrounded, hemmed in on nearly every side. By the late 1980s and ’90s, when neighbors were selling out to corporations and developers, the pressure to follow them had been suffocating. Even now, in 2025, city officials courted them with rezoning maps, promises of profit, and talk of “inevitable growth.”

The sting of those offers never quite faded. They carried the weight of every mortgage payment, every drought, every harvest cut short. Holding out had not been easy—it had been a fight, sometimes bitter, sometimes lonely. And in standing firm, the Sielis had become something rare: admired by some as guardians of heritage, resented by others as stubborn outsiders who refused to “get with the times.”

But here—here the vines still breathed. The soil still remembered.

“You were right,” he said quietly, glancing at Sofia.

Her smile was small, triumphant but gentle. “No, we were right. The land belongs to us because we found a way to belong to it.”

Michael looked over the rows glowing gold in the late light, the laughter of visitors rolling across them like a blessing. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel like he was carrying the past as a burden. He felt like he was carrying it forward.

The vineyard was alive, not just in grapes but in people, in celebration, in the simple stubborn fact of its survival. In a county where most vines had been pulled for asphalt, the Sieli land had endured.

Michael breathed in the evening air, the mingled scents of soil, wine, and roasting garlic from the kitchen drifting out to the guests. He felt gratitude, sharp and deep, knowing he had chosen well.

Here, against all odds, the vineyard was still theirs. And as long as the vines grew, the story would continue.

Over the years, Sofia had watched her uncles soften. Michael and Dominic, both now in their eighties, still spoke loudly against illegal immigration, “open borders,” and remained firmly pro-Trump. But time, family, and the vineyard had taught them something important: that cultural diversity does not weaken America, nor does it make anyone less American.

One late afternoon, the lesson hung in the air as tangibly as the flags on the office wall. The Stars and Stripes fluttered faintly in the breeze from the open window. Beside it, pinned neatly, was the green-white-red tricolor of Italy.

Michael’s eyes narrowed as he studied it. “I still don’t see why we have the Italian flag posted next to ours,” he muttered. His silver hair caught the last light of the sun, his voice gravelly with age. “We’re Americans. Always have been.”

Sofia, seated at the desk with papers spread around her, looked up. “Uncle Mike, you said it yourself not long ago. Yes, we’re Americans. But we also honor and cherish our ancestors’ heritage. That flag isn’t about divided loyalty. It’s about remembering where we came from.”

Michael jabbed a finger toward the tricolor. “But Sof, our ancestors didn’t come from Italy. Not the Italy you’re thinking of. This vineyard was here before there even was a country called Italy. Antonio and Giuseppe never saw themselves as Italians. They were Ligurians—from Genoa, part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. That flag didn’t mean a damn thing to them.”

Sofia sighed, her lips curving into a faint, almost exasperated smile. “I know that, Uncle Mike. But try explaining that every time someone asks. To most people, Italy is the shorthand. They see that flag and understand our roots are there—even if the word ‘Italy’ wasn’t on the map yet.”

Dominic, sitting quietly in the corner, shifted in his chair and finally spoke. “And in Italy, they wouldn’t call you Italian anyway. They’d call you Americani. Outsiders. Always will.”

Sofia turned to him, her voice steady. “I agree, Uncle Dom. I’m not Italian. I’m American. But I’m an American who’s proud of her Italian ancestry—proud of the vineyard, the traditions, and the fight our family went through. That tricolor isn’t about claiming Italy. It’s about remembering.”

Michael’s gaze lingered on the two flags, side by side. For a long time he said nothing. Then his shoulders eased, and his voice softened. “As long as Old Glory flies higher. As long as everyone knows our loyalty is to America first… then maybe it works. That other flag can hang there too. For memory’s sake.”

“That’s all it ever was,” Sofia whispered. “Not a choice between two countries. Just a reminder of the roots that brought us here.”

Dominic gave a short nod. “Roots in Liguria. Branches in America. That’s the truth of it.”

The office fell silent. Outside, the vineyard glowed under the fading light, rows planted by men who had never called themselves Italians, now tended by their descendants who never forgot.

---

Narrator’s Aside

Michael was right. The Italian tricolor, though first unfurled by revolutionaries in 1797, did not become the official flag of Italy until 1861, when the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed during the Risorgimento. In the 1850s, when Giuseppe and Antonio Sieli arrived in California, there was no Italy at all. The peninsula was divided into kingdoms and duchies—the Kingdom of Sardinia in the north (which included Liguria), the Papal States in the center, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south.

Immigrants like the Sielis thought of themselves first as Ligurians, Sicilians, Neapolitans, or Venetians—rarely “Italian.” Only in America, where they were lumped together as “dagos” and “wops,” did the tricolor become a symbol of shared origin. For the Sieli family, it was less about Giuseppe and Antonio’s world, and more about their descendants’ way of holding memory without letting go of America.

That quiet evening in the vineyard office, beneath the paired flags of America and Italy, became more than just a family debate—it planted the seed for words they would later share with the world. Not long afterward, in 2025, the Sieli family gathered to put those convictions into writing, issuing a statement that spoke not only to their customers but to the deeper spirit of who they were.

Our Mission

"In 2025, our family chose to come together and share this statement on our vineyard’s website. We did so to reassure all of our customers—whatever side of the political aisle they may stand on—that while we sometimes disagree about how to achieve the American dream, we agree on the essentials. We believe in treating every person with dignity and respect, and in celebrating the many cultures that enrich our country and our community.

For over a century, the Sieli family has tended these vines through hardship and change. We believe in roots that run deep: in the strength of law and order, in the dignity of honest work, and in the richness of cultural diversity.

Celebrating many traditions does not make us less American—it makes us more. Our vineyard endures because we honor our heritage while welcoming the contributions of others who have shaped this land.

Unity is not uniformity. Like the vineyard itself, we are strongest when many roots nourish one harvest.

— The Sieli Family, 2025"

Author’s Note: The Story Goes On

The story of the Sieli family does not end here.
Like the vineyard that bears their name, their roots run deep—and their branches keep reaching toward whatever sunlight history allows. As the decades turn, new generations will rise to face the changing seasons of America: wars and peace, faith and doubt, loss and renewal.

The Sieli Chronicles will continue as a series, following the family’s lineage through time—each book tracing a different era but all part of one living vine. Though the faces may change, the soil remembers.

This companion blog will grow alongside the novels, updated regularly with new episodes, research, historical essays, and reflections on Italian American heritage. I invite you to stay connected—subscribe, follow, and return often—to walk with the Sielis as their story unfolds, one generation at a time.

Because some stories aren’t meant to end.
They’re meant to keep growing.

 

 Epilogue: The Soil Remembers

Immigration, Identity, and California’s Living Soil

The story of the Sieli vineyard in the San Joaquin Valley is more than a family chronicle. It is, in many ways, the story of California itself.

From the Gold Rush to 2025, the rows of vines have stood as witnesses to prejudice, labor, faith, and transformation. They have absorbed the echoes of lynchings and riots, strikes and protests, weddings and funerals. Their soil has been turned by Italians fleeing poverty, by Mexican migrants seeking dignity, by Okie families escaping the Dust Bowl, and by descendants who now call themselves simply Californian.

The vineyard teaches us that identity is never fixed—only tended, pruned, reshaped, and reborn.

---

Strangers Become “White”

When Giuseppe and Antonio Sieli first planted their vines, they were spat on, mocked as “dagos,” and hounded from mining camps. In the 1920s, their grandchildren still faced burning crosses, whispered slurs, and exclusion from “respectable” society.

And yet by mid-century, the family’s descendants had slipped into the category of “White,” gaining privileges once unthinkable. They owned land, voted without harassment, and their children sat in classrooms once closed to them.

But that transformation carried a cost. In becoming “American,” many forgot their own story. Some distanced themselves from the very migrants—Mexican, Filipino, Chicano—whose hands labored in their fields. The irony was bitter: the Sielis had once been scorned as garlic-eaters and papists, but now some of them muttered the same words about others.

---

Struggles Repeated

By the 1960s and ’70s, when farmworkers marched through Fresno for fair wages and contracts, many Italian growers stood against them. They remembered the vineyard as a symbol of survival, but not of solidarity. History repeated itself—but from the opposite side.

Still, not all forgot. In each generation, a few voices rose to remind the family of its roots. The elders who remembered mobs in the Gold Country, and the young who marched with classmates downtown, pointed to the parallels: we were them, once.

---

A California Story

The Sieli saga is not just about Italians or Mexicans, Catholics or Protestants, insiders or outsiders. It is about California—where waves of migrants meet, clash, divide, and eventually blend. It is about a land where prejudice is fierce but resilience is fiercer.

Walk the vineyard rows and you can trace the state’s history:

• The Gold Rush miners who found only hostility.

• The Depression migrants who slept between the vines.

• The Prohibition bootleggers who kept wine alive in the shadows.

• The union marchers who demanded dignity in the fields.

• The modern children who marry across borders and call each other cousins.

---

The Roots That Bind

What does it mean to belong in California?

The vineyard offers one answer: belonging is not granted, it is grown. Slowly, painfully, season by season, like vines digging deeper into the soil.

The roots remember the sweat, the tears, the blood spilled in prejudice and in perseverance. They remind us that identity is not about erasing the past, but about carrying it forward with honesty—even when it is uncomfortable.

---

A Living Legacy

By 2025, bottles from Sieli Vineyards bear labels that honor not just Italians but all who tended the vines—Mexicans, Filipinos, Dust Bowl Okies, modern Californians of every kind.

Some descendants still argue for fences, order, and assimilation. Others insist on remembering roots and celebrating diversity. The family remains divided—but around the harvest table, they still break bread together.

And in that act, year after year, the vineyard endures. Its leaves whisper the truth the land has always known:

We are all migrants. We are all kin. The soil remembers, and so should we.

Author’s Note: The Story Goes On

The story of the Sieli family does not end here.
Like the vineyard that bears their name, their roots run deep—and their branches keep reaching toward whatever sunlight history allows. As the decades turn, new generations will rise to face the changing seasons of America: wars and peace, faith and doubt, loss and renewal.

The Sieli Chronicles will continue as a series, following the family’s lineage through time—each book tracing a different era but all part of one living vine. Though the faces may change, the soil remembers.

This companion blog will grow alongside the novels, updated regularly with new episodes, research, historical essays, and reflections on Italian American heritage. I invite you to stay connected—subscribe, follow, and return often—to walk with the Sielis as their story unfolds, one generation at a time.

Because some stories aren’t meant to end.
They’re meant to keep growing.

— Chris M. Forte

Personal Reflection

In reading this history, I find myself standing somewhere in the middle of the Sieli family’s arguments. I believe in borders. I believe in the rule of law and strict immigration enforcement. I am even pro-Trump. But that does not mean I despise immigrants or wish to erase culture. On the contrary, I value the contributions of legal immigrant workers and the richness that cultural diversity brings to California and America.

Being against illegal immigration and for border security does not automatically make one racist, or blind to the dignity of those who seek a better life. Like the vineyard itself, I believe we can hold both truths: that order and law protect us, but that memory and diversity enrich us. The challenge—just as the Sielis discovered—is learning how to live between fences and soil. Because the soil remembers. 

---

Note on Sources

Though the Sieli family is fictional, their story is grounded in documented history: anti-Italian lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan’s presence in California, Prohibition grape bricks, Dust Bowl migrations, and the United Farm Workers’ strikes.

Selected Sources:

• Dickie, John. Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food.

• Gabaccia, Donna. Italy’s Many Diasporas.

• Orsi, Robert. The Madonna of 115th Street.

• Saxton, Alexander. The Indispensable Enemy.

• Vargas, Zaragosa. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights.

• Vellon, Peter. A Great Conspiracy against Our Race.

• United Farm Workers archives, Keene, CA.

• Local parish histories and diocesan records of the San Joaquin Valley.

Bibliography (selected):
Chavez, César. An Organizer’s Tale.
Daniels, Roger. Coming to America.
Guglielmo, Thomas A., and Vicki L. Ruiz, eds. A Companion to Latina/o Studies.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color.
Lytle Hernández, Kelly. Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Mangione, Jerre, and Ben Morreale. La Storia.
Roediger, David R. Working Toward Whiteness.
Ruiz, Vicki L. From Out of the Shadows.
Vigil, James Diego. From Indians to Chicanos.

---

About the Author

Chris M. Forte is a California-based writer exploring the intersections of history, culture, and immigrant identity. Through fiction, nonfiction, and cultural commentary, he preserves overlooked stories of migrants, workers, and families who shaped the Golden State. His projects include historical novels, cultural travel guides, and sociological studies of organized crime and immigrant life.

He is the creator of The Italian Californian, a platform dedicated to Italian heritage in California and its ties to the broader diaspora.