In the autumn of 1947, Lily Bollinger was on an audacious mission to reclaim the American market. She had survived the dark years of the Occupation by hiding her best bottles behind false walls and outwitting Nazi officers in her own dining room. But when she reached the fog-swept hills of San Francisco, she found a new battle brewing—one that had nothing to do with wine and everything to do with the soul of a city.

Lily hadn’t come to California to be a political activist, but her “grit” was a magnetic force that instantly recognized a fellow soldier. At a high-society gala in the St. Francis Hotel, amidst the scent of gardenias and the clinking of fine crystal, she was introduced to Friedel Klussmann. The local press had dismissed Friedel as a sentimental nuisance, a woman standing in the way of modern progress because she refused to let the city’s mayor dismantle the iconic cable car system. The mayor called the cars obsolete and a burden, but as Lily looked out the window at the steep hills and the iron tracks, she saw a spirit of defiance that mirrored her own.

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