The Secret Ranch

When a journalist from a popular magazine shows an interest in eighty-five-year-old Jean Warner’s experience as an enemy code interceptor during World War II, this triggers Jean’s memories about her past: how she decided to join the Women’s Army Corps, met the challenges of basic training, and then became an expert in International Morse Code. She was then sent to Two Rock Ranch Station, near Petaluma, California, to do the top-secret work of intercepting enemy transmissions. This assignment was grueling and demanding, and she knew men’s lives depended on her. She was acutely aware that her own brothers were fighting in the Pacific.

Jean’s personal life during the war was particularly painful. She recalls a challenging friendship with another WAC and how much she suffered when she lost a loved one. She also keeps a shameful secret buried within her that she does not want to share with anyone—especially a journalist. Her troubled daughter, Carolyn, hopes to read in the magazine all about her mother’s perfect, admirable life—unblemished by a failed marriage like hers. Jean wants to help her daughter but is reluctant to expose details of her past life that would crush that perfect image.