Traveling West. From Philadephia, PA to Mill Valley, CA.
Sometimes we get a request for something a little different at Silverplume. A novelist client approached Silverplume with a tantalizing challenge. Embarking on the start of a trilogy about two interconnected families stretched across three generations and two continents, he needed deep background research. Best of all, he wanted to draw on his own sprawling family's densely woven stories. His novels would be informed by their dramatic experiences and by the history of that time.
What could be more captivating? A sprawling, Catholic family rooted in Málaga, Spain, spurred to emigrate to the United States in the early 20th century by encroaching political conflict in Morocco. A fierce mother desperate to liberate her sons from required military service. A father lit with a brazen ambition to propel his children out of poverty, his intent set on the New York and Philadelphia jewelry trades. Daughters, eager to shuck limitations and to claim higher education and professional pursuits as their own. An immigrant family, inspired to toss aside freshly claimed roots, to cross a still foreign country, back to a place that felt in their bones like southern Spain: Marin, CA.
Silverplume was there to uncover the details: the birth entries in the family Bible; the emigration records; the revealing ship records; the census revelations; the historical underpinnings of the time; the memories and perceptions of family members; and the conflicts and legal trouble that would ensnare sons and sons of sons.
Passengers on the P. de Satrustegui ship, bound for New York from Málaga, Spain, Sept. 28, 1920