The Winemaker's Daughter

By Timothy Egan

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.18 x 9.58 x 6.56
• Publisher: Knopf; (January 13, 2004)
• ISBN: 140004099X
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: 2,341

Book Description

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 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.