St. James Park: The social and economic conditions surrounding the 1933 Brooke Hart kidnapping

The Brooke Hart kidnapping occurred against a backdrop of both the Great Depression and the end of Prohibition. The economic desperation, especially in the cannery industry, led to unionization struggles, and illegal bootlegging fostered a culture of defiance and violence, leading to erosion of public trust in the legal system. The kidnapping fueled a mob mentality that led to the notorious lynching and subsequent denial of prosecution.

Our speaker is John Doll is a third-generation San Josean who earned economics degrees from UC Santa Cruz (B.A.) and UW Madison (M.S). He worked on downtown redevelopment in San Jose, military base conversion in Alameda, and waterfront development in San Francisco before writing St. James Park, a historical fiction novel based on the 1933 Brooke Hart kidnapping. Kirkus Reviews praised the novel for its cinematic style, and it won the 2026 IPPY Gold Medal Award for West-Pacific Fiction.