Drawing on newspaper reports from the era, the filming schedule and screenplay, and behind-the-scenes footage from the special-edition DVD, Hill beckons young adult readers to the premiere of "The Movie Adventures Of Eva Jordan" ($8.99 in paperback from Stansbury Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle).
According to Ned Walsh, who sits a few desks away in Mr. Owens' seventh-grade classroom, "Robin Hood and the crew" were soon to disembark in Chico and head to "the film location at One Mile."
Eva lives with her parents, Ernest and Susanna Jordan, and three younger sisters (and a fourth home from college). She loves the "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" stories but is not allowed to see movies.
Deeply involved in the Salvation Army church Eva's parents and other congregants are part of the "annual Christmas bell-ringing effort to collect money for the town's poor. Members took turns standing in front of Oser's Department Store at Third and Main streets to shake a loud bell...."
Eva is thirteen (going on fourteen) and intensely curious. And she wonders why Mr. Owens is talking about Spain, and those "'fighting their leader, General Franco, and his fascist ideology.'" He adds, "'big-time Hollywood actors, like Errol Flynn, the same fellow who will be here soon to play Robin Hood, have already gone to Spain to see what they could do to help the Loyalists.'"
Then, abruptly, the school board removes Mr. Owens amid charges that he is a communist. In response, Ned and Eva hatch an audacious plot to ask Errol Flynn to intervene and to help raise support for the anti-Franco movement.
Once the Warner Brothers film crew and stars arrive, and Bidwell Park is transformed into medieval Sherwood Forest, Ned and Eva are daily visitors. They end up becoming extras, meeting Flynn himself, and getting the surprise of their lives.
And Chico "officially changed the name of the whole northern section of Ivy Street, renaming it 'Warner Street.'"
