The Winemaker's Daughter: A Novel - Hardcover

Egan, Timothy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 140004099X ISBN 13: 9781400040995

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2004

Synopsis

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist: a stunning first novel that takes us from the wine country of the Pacific Northwest to the vineyards of Italy.

Brunella Cartolano is passionate and high-spirited, an accomplished architect and a daughter of the American West who tends to fall in love with lost causes. While she is trying to protect the Seattle waterfront from development, she also finds her father’s vineyard east of the Cascade Mountains enduring the worst drought in history. Water is the base ingredient of winemaking, and for people who believe in the transformative power of wine, water has become the new petroleum―hoarded and stolen, the target of greed and the source of treachery, even among friends. Brunella struggles to protect her father’s land from a mysterious force―someone who seems to be buying up all the water and driving away the people who work the land. When a wildfire roars out of control and kills a squadron of firefighters, the question of the lack of water becomes ever more urgent for Brunella.

Her search to uncover the real cause of the tragedy will determine where, how, and with whom she will spend her life. It propels this powerful debut novel to a startling conclusion.

About this title

Review:

"Larry McMurtry has Texas, Garrison Keillor has Minnesota and Louise Erdrich has the Northern Plains. With this novel . . . Timothy Egan stakes his claim as the voice of the Pacific Northwest. . . . A hugely impressive first novel. " --The Baltimore Sun

"An action-packed, finely detailed portrait of the land and people of the Pacific Northwest." --San Francisco Chronicle

"A good read, showcasing Mr. Egan's lived-in sense of place as well as his knowledge of wine culture."--The New York Times

"A page-turner that manages to avoid the trite and instead embrace truthful contemporary issues. . . . Well-crafted."--Rocky Mountain News

"The Winemaker's Daughter is an allegory of sorts, an extended conceit in which the figures and events stand for something larger than themselves. Like his prior nonfiction work, it's incisive, exacting, and sharply written; it also benefits from his acerbic sensibility, which lends it a satiric wit. Bravo to Tim Egan!" --David Guterson

"Moving. . . . Peppered with wonderful descriptions . . . knockout local color . . . [and] a portrait of Seattle that tempts you to buy a plane ticket to see the place for yourself." --The New York Times Book Review

"The contours of the land seem to shape Egan's characters . . . giving them unusual depth and binding them inextricably to one another. . . . The Winemaker's Daughter may be Egan's first novel, but it is obviously the work of an old hand." --The Columbus Dispatch

"An affecting work." --The Dallas Morning News

"Egan knows the Pacific Northwest well and writes about it lovingly. . . . With a reporter's eye for detail, Egan deftly delineates some hot-button issues of the late 1990s (redevelopment; the dot-com frenzy and inevitable bust; Indian casinos)." --Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Boils over with serious issues about winemaking in the West. . . . Oenophiles will revel in the wine-geeky details." --The Oregonian

"An involving, complex, puzzling novel that is mystery and romance, literature and entertainment. . . . Egan cuts to the core and takes us on a journey rather unlike any other." --Statesman Journal (Salem, OR)

About the Author:

Timothy Egan is a third-generation westerner who was inspired to write this book after living in Italy for a year. The recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his part in a series on race in America, he has worked for the last fifteen years as a national reporter for the New York Times. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Joni Balter, and two children, Sophie and Casey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 140004099X
• ISBN 13: 9781400040995
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320