While Julie Prince thinks Thomas Wolfe is a fine writer, she rejects his long-held tenet about not returning to one’s birthplace with the eyes of youth.

Flying in the face of Wolfe’s “you can’t go home again” maxim, the Napa resident has been back a number of times to the picturesque hamlet of her birth on the outskirts of Sassoferrato, itself a relatively small town in the gently rolling hills of Italy’s Marche region.

On the most recent journey, Julie took along her daughter and granddaughter so they could get a feel for their heritage, in a region populated by earnest, hard-working farmers and miners.

Her parents emigrated to the United States in the mid-1950s, but only after the sulfur mine that provided the family livelihood shut down.

Both mother and father found work in the Napa Valley wine industry, a path Julie followed when she signed on as personal assistant to Margrit Biever Mondavi at the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville more than two decades ago.

I caught up with Julie, daughter Robin Patterson and granddaughter Noelle Roldan in Rome as we boarded an express train headed to Ancona, an industrial city on the Adriatic Sea. We hopped off at Fabriano, where we’d meet a contingent from Sassoferrato, including a couple of Julie’s cousins. Julie stayed with family and I holed up in a delightful tiny hotel and restaurant on the town’s main square.

During the two-and-a-half-hour train trip, I learned that the energetic, diminutive blonde we’ve come to know over the years at Mondavi was born Giuliana Santi in Casa Cagione, a hillside hamlet bordering Sassoferrato. It seems ironic that she wound up working at a winery founded by Robert Mondavi, whose parents also come from Sassoferrato.

Julie comes from a family of farmers, she recounted, and her father worked most of his young adult life in a sulfur mine in nearby Cabernardi. Her mother was actually born in Pennsylvania but relocated, for her grandmother’s health, to the sunny hillsides of the Marche region when she was 6 years old. She met her future husband at a young age. They lived next door to one another in Casa Caggione and attended the same one room schoolhouse.

The run-up to World War II and the war itself interrupted many daily routines, even those on the farms around Sassoferrato, Julie continued. That included wedding plans, as Alfredo Santi was shipped off to Ethiopia for several years on Mussolini’s orders.

On his return to Italy in 1937, “my parents married and my dad moved in with my mom as her father had given her the farmhouse as a dowry.”

The Santis had four children, but one, a boy, died when Julie was but 1 year old. Julie spoke of walking three kilometers up hill and down dale to go to the same one-room schoolhouse that her parents attended. On Saturday nights, even in the snow, the folks from Casa Caggione would cross a valley and small stream to meet up with friends and neighbors at the dance hall in La Fornace, another hamlet within earshot of home. “There were always men at the beginning and end of the group carrying carbide lamps so we didn’t lose anyone,” she recalled.

Post-war problems came home to roost in the ’50s, and a strike at the mine where her father worked prompted the family to forsake their hardscrabble life for the promise of the New World.

“My father had a connection, a cousin in Lodi who knew Americo Mondavi, Cesare Mondavi’s nephew. He worked for Cesare Mondavi at Charles Krug and invited my mother to come to the Napa  Valley, with the promise of employment.”

Julie said her mother and oldest sister struck out for California; she, a younger sister and her father followed 16 months later. By the time Julie arrived in St. Helena, her mother and sister had rented a home on Railroad Avenue. The entire family wound up working at Charles Krug, most helping Paco Gould with the tastings program he initiated there.

Going home

This was Julie Prince’s fourth return visit to Sassoferrato. We not only had family to guide us through the region, but Rita and Umberto Ballanti, surely Sassoferrato’s goodwill ambassadors, were more than happy to give a journalist the Cook’s tour and more.

The population of Sassoferrato today is about 8,000, half of what it was prior to a mass migration to other European nations and the New World in the ’50s.

Sassaferrato is about 60 kilometers from the Adriatic, in the gentle hills that surround the Appenine Mountains. It’s on a rise not far from the ruins of the Roman town Sentinum and the border of Umbria. Its restored hilltop castle was erected in the 12th century. Its main products are grains, including the ancient farro, beef, honey and — from nearby vineyards — a couple of prized white wines, verdicchio from the castles of Jesi and Lacrima of Morro d’Alba.

The townsfolk are proud of their heritage, with third-term Mayor Luigi Rinaldi, a former member of Italy’s Parliament, pointing out the so-called “Battle of Nations” took place at Sentinum in 295 B.C. The Romans were able to overcome a formidable coalition of Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians and their Gallic allies. The result was a Roman victory, and Rome went on to unify Central Italy. The area became a crossroads in the Roman Empire and an important commercial center, we learned on a visit to a relatively new, impressive town Museum of Rural Traditions and Crafts.

It was here we saw everything from unique window sill stoves to rudimentary farm equipment, some 8,000 items that tell the story of Sassoferrato from Roman times through devastating world wars to the present.

Prince said each of her return trips home has provided decidedly different perspectives.

“I’m so proud the locals have achieved so much, especially in the areas of arts and culture. They’ve come a long way in Sassoferrato since I was growing up here.

“I’m amazed how well the children of farmers have done. A lot of them have taken early retirement, some even with homes at the beach.

“Yet they are unspoiled by success — they still live a simple life.”

Prince noted that “food is important to the residents of Sassoferrato. They don’t want a tomato that doesn’t come from the garden.”

With her family members in tow, Prince visited the mine where her father labored for many years. It was the first time she’d been to the now-inactive Carbernardi sulfur mine since she was 10 years old. It, too, has a small museum installation in a former administrative center. We examined crude mining implements and photographs of those who worked deep down inside the earth. Julie located one photo of a group of miners that included her father, Alfredo, and we gathered around to catch a glimpse of this moment in time. It prompted a discussion about the cousins the three Americans were visiting, as all are cousins from her father’s side of the family.

“Every place we go today, we go by auto,” Prince added. “When I was growing up here, we used to walk everywhere — we did it all the time without thinking.”

As we passed by the town’s best eatery, Albergo Appennino Bar and Ristorante on Piazza Antonio Gramsci, Prince told me she’s “coming away with a good feeling” from this visit, one that provided both daughter and granddaughter with a glimpse of what it was like growing up in rural Italy.

Giuliana Santi Prince smiled at her progeny and relatives and quietly said: “I think this was another lifetime for me.”