Joseph Andrew Cerny

Joseph Cerny was born in San Francisco and is a descendant of a grandmother, great aunt, and two great grandfathers who were bootleggers. In 1988, after graduating from the University of California, San Diego, with three degrees, including a minor in American History, he attended Eastern Virginia Medical School and graduated in 1992. After a career as a family physician spanning nearly thirty years, Cerny is now a volunteer for Placer County Museums in Northern California. He dresses up in period clothing and gives tours of old- town Auburn, a former Gold Rush town, in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. He also gives tours of Bernhard House, an old hotel converted into a home, with wine-making complexes on the property.

Cerny enjoys talking and writing about American history, of which the story of his grandmother, Ann White, is an important example. The Bootlegger’s Daughter: A San Francisco Tale is his first novel.