A Walk in the Clouds (1995)

In 1945, after World War II, United States Army Sgt. Paul Sutton returns to San Francisco to reunite with his wife, Betty, whom he married, following a whirlwind courtship, the day before he departed for the Pacific. The war has left him with emotional scars, and he experiences flashbacks on a regular basis. Paul’s reunion with Betty is strained, especially after he discovers that, although he has written her “almost every day,” she stopped reading his letters after the first few, and keeps the hundreds of unopened envelopes in a footlocker. He is determined to make a go of the marriage, however, and hopes to establish a new career for himself. She insists he continue to sell chocolates door-to-door, and he sets off to Sacramento.

En route, he meets fellow train passenger Victoria Aragon, a graduate student whose Mexican-American family owns a vineyard in the Napa Valley. When Victoria is accosted by two men on their bus to Sacramento, Paul intervenes and ends up beating up the men in self-defense. After all three men are kicked off the bus as a result, Paul finds a crying Victoria alone, further down the road. When he learns she is pregnant by her professor, Paul offers to introduce himself to her very traditionalist family as her husband. Victoria’s father, Alberto, is infuriated, not only that she married a man below her social standing, but without his permission as well.