Call number
FIC WIG
Collection
Genres
Publication
Simon & Schuster (2022), 544 pages
Description
Fifteen years after the publication of Evidence of Things Unseen, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins returns with a novel destined to be an American classic: a sweeping masterwork set during World War II about the meaning of family and the limitations of the American dream. Rockwell "Rocky" Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife, Lou, raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death. As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy. Rocky is determined to protect his remaining family and the land where they've loved and lost so much. But when the government decides to build a Japanese American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he's battled for years. Complicating matters is the fact that the idealistic Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family. Properties of Thirst is a novel that is both universal and intimate. It is the story of a changing American landscape and an examination of one of the darkest periods in this country's past, told through the stories of the individual loves and losses that weave together to form the fabric of our shared history. Ultimately, it is an unflinching distillation of our nation's essence--and a celebration of the bonds of love and family that persist against all odds.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member WiserWisegirl
Please, I need another star for this rating! "You can't save what you do not love." Tragedy and ethical irony claw at the hearts of Mary Higgins' larger than life characters in this epic literary masterpiece about finding love and family in all the wrong places. Rockwell Rhodes receives his wealth
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC. My favorite ever.
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from his industrialist father, whom he hates for stealing minerals out of the ground for his fame and, of course, for the literal mine of fortune that is now "Rocky's" inheritance. Rocky escapes the big city and creates an idyllic life on his California ranch with the love of his life and two beautiful children, until the water below his land is 'mined' right out from under him by the LA Water company. Rocky's wife Lou took a gamble when she followed him, a stranger who spied her from across the Chicago train station they were both passing through. He stole her heart by building the mansion with a bell tower he had promised, and he did it with his own bare hands! "And what if love does not save you?" In the end her luck ran out when, in spite of being a doctor AND a chef level garden to table master creator of healthy and delectable food, she was struck down by sickness and tragically expired due to ill informed treatment. The wild child of the twins was Stryker, but he ends up a hero in an infamous national incident of war. Sunny, stubborn but sweet, seeks and recreates the love of her absent mother in the mysteries of food she must unlock from French language books with unknown ingredients. She ironically finds love with a Jewish lawyer and war officer, in WWII, tasked with creating the prison-home for Japanese-American citizens on the plot next door; he knows his assignment is both illegal and immoral and he wants out. It is hard to see the beauty in Rocky's 6'4" twin sister, who left NYC to help raise her brother's children, until you see her play the harp or travel with her as the puppet master of culture in the big apple and Europe. About the properties of thirst and water: sometimes it will swallow the ones you love, and the only part of them you can save is their essence, hidden in the memories. If you are as good as Higgin's characters, your love can recreate that essence from thin air, even when there are no real memories… The literary experience of this four digit length novel is as delectable as the cuisine and the stories of love that are artfully woven throughout its masterful language. You will masticate the darkly humorous turns of phrase and savor the empty places in the sinuous themes of this steadily erudite experience, and you will never want it to end! The afterward is the true story of the author's cruel health incident. The way her daughter and friends-village helped her rally to finish this beautiful story is an inspiration.Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC. My favorite ever.
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LibraryThing member ozzer
In this novel, Marianne Wiggins expertly explores a dark period in American history through the lenses of interesting, fully realized characters and a powerful landscape. Throughout, her unifying metaphor is water and thirst. She uses it to examine the complexities of love and connection between
The Rhodes family, curiously consisting of three generations of twins, lives on a ranch in California’s picturesque Owens Valley in the 1940’s. They display abundant helpings of familial love and caring characterized by food, traditions, anecdotes, idealism and individualism. These are tempered by loss, sacrifice and grieving mainly caused by the war and disease. To provide texture to her sweeping narrative, Wiggins includes actual historical facts surrounding the U.S.’s xenophobic racist governmental policy of Japanese internment and L.A.’s exploitation of the valley for its scarce natural resource—water.
Rocky Rhodes is the patriarch of the family. Ironically, he inherited his wealth from a father who became rich by plundering the environment for natural resources. Now Rocky finds himself as an impassioned advocate for preserving the water that L.A. is sucking away from his homeland. Also, he is grieving the untimely death of his wife, Lou, from polio. As a caring physician, Lou apparently acquired the virus while treating Native-Americans in the valley.
Rocky is left to raise his twin children, Sunny and Stryker. Sunny copes with the loss of her mother by deciphering her notes on French cooking (all in French), while her brother reacts to his own grief by recklessly acting out. He joins the Navy before Pearl Harbor and apparently dies there during the attack only after marrying a Japanese American woman and fathering twin sons. Unfortunately, Wiggins never satisfactorily provides closure or sufficient detail for this sad plot element. This shortcoming can be forgiven, however, since Wiggins suffered a devastating stroke before finishing the novel and it was only completed through the diligence of her daughter.
Aside from the immediate family, two other characters play prominent roles in the plot. One is Rocky’s ungainly twin sister, Cas, who comes to help with raising his twins following Lou’s passing. She is an endearing personage, who is both physically and figuratively larger than life. The other is Schiff, an idealistic young lawyer sent by the Interior Department to establish the Manzanar Internment Camp for Japanese American nationals from the West Coast exclusion zone. As the child of holocaust survivors, the injustice of citizenship by ethnicity is not lost on Schiff. His infatuation with Sunny makes for a delightful boy-meets-loses-regains-girl love story that Wiggins exploits to the fullest.
PROPERTIES OF THIRST is a wonderful reading experience filled with intimate details and universal themes. In creating this novel, Wiggins has clearly done her homework. While seamlessly following the adventures of the Rhodes family, Wiggins manages to delve into the intricacies of French cooking, the difficulties and injustices of warehousing certain Americans out of fear. And especially, along the way, she evokes the expansive setting in the American high desert along with its haciendas, unique vegetation, and sweeping landscapes that were repeatedly used as Hollywood movie sets.
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people and to the land. “You can’t save what you don’t love” is her main message.The Rhodes family, curiously consisting of three generations of twins, lives on a ranch in California’s picturesque Owens Valley in the 1940’s. They display abundant helpings of familial love and caring characterized by food, traditions, anecdotes, idealism and individualism. These are tempered by loss, sacrifice and grieving mainly caused by the war and disease. To provide texture to her sweeping narrative, Wiggins includes actual historical facts surrounding the U.S.’s xenophobic racist governmental policy of Japanese internment and L.A.’s exploitation of the valley for its scarce natural resource—water.
Rocky Rhodes is the patriarch of the family. Ironically, he inherited his wealth from a father who became rich by plundering the environment for natural resources. Now Rocky finds himself as an impassioned advocate for preserving the water that L.A. is sucking away from his homeland. Also, he is grieving the untimely death of his wife, Lou, from polio. As a caring physician, Lou apparently acquired the virus while treating Native-Americans in the valley.
Rocky is left to raise his twin children, Sunny and Stryker. Sunny copes with the loss of her mother by deciphering her notes on French cooking (all in French), while her brother reacts to his own grief by recklessly acting out. He joins the Navy before Pearl Harbor and apparently dies there during the attack only after marrying a Japanese American woman and fathering twin sons. Unfortunately, Wiggins never satisfactorily provides closure or sufficient detail for this sad plot element. This shortcoming can be forgiven, however, since Wiggins suffered a devastating stroke before finishing the novel and it was only completed through the diligence of her daughter.
Aside from the immediate family, two other characters play prominent roles in the plot. One is Rocky’s ungainly twin sister, Cas, who comes to help with raising his twins following Lou’s passing. She is an endearing personage, who is both physically and figuratively larger than life. The other is Schiff, an idealistic young lawyer sent by the Interior Department to establish the Manzanar Internment Camp for Japanese American nationals from the West Coast exclusion zone. As the child of holocaust survivors, the injustice of citizenship by ethnicity is not lost on Schiff. His infatuation with Sunny makes for a delightful boy-meets-loses-regains-girl love story that Wiggins exploits to the fullest.
PROPERTIES OF THIRST is a wonderful reading experience filled with intimate details and universal themes. In creating this novel, Wiggins has clearly done her homework. While seamlessly following the adventures of the Rhodes family, Wiggins manages to delve into the intricacies of French cooking, the difficulties and injustices of warehousing certain Americans out of fear. And especially, along the way, she evokes the expansive setting in the American high desert along with its haciendas, unique vegetation, and sweeping landscapes that were repeatedly used as Hollywood movie sets.
Show Less
LibraryThing member WiserWisegirl
Please, I need another star for this rating! "You can't save what you do not love." Tragedy and ethical irony claw at the hearts of Mary Higgins' larger than life characters in this epic literary masterpiece about finding love and family in all the wrong places. Rockwell Rhodes receives his wealth
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC. My favorite ever.
Show More
from his industrialist father, whom he hates for stealing minerals out of the ground for his fame and, of course, for the literal mine of fortune that is now "Rocky's" inheritance. Rocky escapes the big city and creates an idyllic life on his California ranch with the love of his life and two beautiful children, until the water below his land is 'mined' right out from under him by the LA Water company. Rocky's wife Lou took a gamble when she followed him, a stranger who spied her from across the Chicago train station they were both passing through. He stole her heart by building the mansion with a bell tower he had promised, and he did it with his own bare hands! "And what if love does not save you?" In the end her luck ran out when, in spite of being a doctor AND a chef level garden to table master creator of healthy and delectable food, she was struck down by sickness and tragically expired due to ill informed treatment. The wild child of the twins was Stryker, but he ends up a hero in an infamous national incident of war. Sunny, stubborn but sweet, seeks and recreates the love of her absent mother in the mysteries of food she must unlock from French language books with unknown ingredients. She ironically finds love with a Jewish lawyer and war officer, in WWII, tasked with creating the prison-home for Japanese-American citizens on the plot next door; he knows his assignment is both illegal and immoral and he wants out. It is hard to see the beauty in Rocky's 6'4" twin sister, who left NYC to help raise her brother's children, until you see her play the harp or travel with her as the puppet master of culture in the big apple and Europe. About the properties of thirst and water: sometimes it will swallow the ones you love, and the only part of them you can save is their essence, hidden in the memories. If you are as good as Higgin's characters, your love can recreate that essence from thin air, even when there are no real memories… The literary experience of this four digit length novel is as delectable as the cuisine and the stories of love that are artfully woven throughout its masterful language. You will masticate the darkly humorous turns of phrase and savor the empty places in the sinuous themes of this steadily erudite experience, and you will never want it to end! The afterward is the true story of the author's cruel health incident. The way her daughter and friends-village helped her rally to finish this beautiful story is an inspiration.Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for this ARC. My favorite ever.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ccayne
This book has something for everyone: family saga, WWII, American West, environmental issues, food, romance, family wealth, teenage drama, untimely deaths, Japanese internment camps, travel, duty , ethics and includes dogs. It is an engrossing read with a real sense of place and strong characters.
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It is well written and be sure to read the epilogue about it came to be published - quite a story in itself. Show Less
LibraryThing member LukeS
It’s impossible.
It’s impossible that prose could be so distinctive and unorthodox yet never lose its power or its focus.
It’s impossible that characters could be so larger than life, so diverting, so compelling.
It’s impossible that in Properties of Thirst, Marianne Wiggins could alloy into
Marianne Wiggins has such stalwart and brilliant artists as Ruth Ozeki and Colum McCann in awe and envy with this utterly surpassing novel.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, an idealistic Interior Department lawyer named Schiff is tasked with constructing and administering in California’s Owens Valley an “internment camp”—a prison—for Americans of Japanese descent. This assignment affronts every principle Schiff holds dear; he struggles with this duty, little better than a seeming bit of flotsam amid all that swirls about him. Characters orbit around him strutting and fretting:
Rocky, the patriarch settled in the mountainside mansion for nearly twenty years, who bitterly fought with LA Water and lost; his cultured, sardonic twin sister Cas; and his dazzling gourmet cook daughter, named Sunny; they all encounter Schiff at the most trying, challenging moment in his life. (And Sunny is the reason I wrote a sentence in French. To find out why, you must read the book.)
Add to these dramatis personae the hysterically funny and awe-inspiring GI supply officer who marshals the materials and manages the construction of the camp, and seemingly every Hollywood stock character of the era is represented. In fact, Hollywood companies descend on the town for location shoots, but skip out on their bills. Rocky mentions Tom Mix of early Westerns fame, and later Bogart’s and Katharine Hepburn’s names are dropped.
This cinematic connection intrigues me. The greed, hatred, and jingoism fueling this maelstrom remind strongly of movies back when they actually wrote plots and characters. There is also the vivid visual features, with the rocky Sierra Nevada mountains, the brilliant blue of the sky and its myriad strange effects, and the toxic lakebed, casualty of the LA Water Wars, utterly desiccated and spreading respiratory disease on the air to internee and soldier alike.
These are some of the ills falling out from war and murderous greed. The story carries these weights freely, effortlessly: we are treated to scenes of wide-eyed wonder at the natural world, of heart-melting attraction and love, of rage-inducing neglect and callousness, all to the tune of the never-ceasing delights of Wiggins’s prose. Her eye for detail and her ear for wit, her felicity with phrasemaking and her driving pace—these all shine forth in the reader’s massive payout of joy and wonder. We could cover more, much more, in this bravura offering, but I will cut my excitement and floridity short. Please do yourself the honor of taking up Properties of Thirst.
It’s impossible that prose could be so distinctive and unorthodox yet never lose its power or its focus.
It’s impossible that characters could be so larger than life, so diverting, so compelling.
It’s impossible that in Properties of Thirst, Marianne Wiggins could alloy into
Show More
one narrative two frightful examples of American Might Makes Right: the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, and the bullying theft of Sierra runoff water by parched and undeserving Los Angeles. Tout ça c’est un soufflé étonnant [the whole is an astonishing soufflé]: unified, sturdy, audacious, and unforgettable. Brilliant.Marianne Wiggins has such stalwart and brilliant artists as Ruth Ozeki and Colum McCann in awe and envy with this utterly surpassing novel.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, an idealistic Interior Department lawyer named Schiff is tasked with constructing and administering in California’s Owens Valley an “internment camp”—a prison—for Americans of Japanese descent. This assignment affronts every principle Schiff holds dear; he struggles with this duty, little better than a seeming bit of flotsam amid all that swirls about him. Characters orbit around him strutting and fretting:
Rocky, the patriarch settled in the mountainside mansion for nearly twenty years, who bitterly fought with LA Water and lost; his cultured, sardonic twin sister Cas; and his dazzling gourmet cook daughter, named Sunny; they all encounter Schiff at the most trying, challenging moment in his life. (And Sunny is the reason I wrote a sentence in French. To find out why, you must read the book.)
Add to these dramatis personae the hysterically funny and awe-inspiring GI supply officer who marshals the materials and manages the construction of the camp, and seemingly every Hollywood stock character of the era is represented. In fact, Hollywood companies descend on the town for location shoots, but skip out on their bills. Rocky mentions Tom Mix of early Westerns fame, and later Bogart’s and Katharine Hepburn’s names are dropped.
This cinematic connection intrigues me. The greed, hatred, and jingoism fueling this maelstrom remind strongly of movies back when they actually wrote plots and characters. There is also the vivid visual features, with the rocky Sierra Nevada mountains, the brilliant blue of the sky and its myriad strange effects, and the toxic lakebed, casualty of the LA Water Wars, utterly desiccated and spreading respiratory disease on the air to internee and soldier alike.
These are some of the ills falling out from war and murderous greed. The story carries these weights freely, effortlessly: we are treated to scenes of wide-eyed wonder at the natural world, of heart-melting attraction and love, of rage-inducing neglect and callousness, all to the tune of the never-ceasing delights of Wiggins’s prose. Her eye for detail and her ear for wit, her felicity with phrasemaking and her driving pace—these all shine forth in the reader’s massive payout of joy and wonder. We could cover more, much more, in this bravura offering, but I will cut my excitement and floridity short. Please do yourself the honor of taking up Properties of Thirst.
Show Less
LibraryThing member tinkerbellkk
While this book took me some time to get into, once I got into the groove of it I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story of a family who's patriarch spends his life battling for the right to water that was diverted from their ranch to LA. There were some great quirky characters that made for good reading
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and a lot of detail about French cooking that contributed to the fabric of their lives. Enjoyable. Show Less
LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
This was a great book and even more than how good it was had to do with how it was finished after Wiggins suffered a massive stroke before the completion. The Afterword by. her daughter explains how it was done and does contribute to an uneven ending. The story is a family saga that deals with the
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Rhodes family. Rocky and Cas are twins whose father amassed a great fortune from minerals and mining. Rocky escaped the east coast in his youth and moved to the Owens Valley at the foothills of the Sierra in 1920's. He built a ranch and met the love of is life Lou with whom he had twins(Stryker and Sunny). Tragically, Lou a doctor and a chef died from polio when the twins were 3 and Cas came to California to help raise them. That is the back story when the book opens on the eve of World War II. There are so many intertwined stories in the book as it deals with the war, Japanese interment camps, water rights, racism, war politics, and mostly the relationships among the many characters in the book. The main characters are Sunny and Schiff the Jewish lawyer who works for the Dept. of Interior and is the head of Japan's interment camp at Manzanar which is next to the Rhodes ranch. The prose is terrific and the story in intricate and shows great skill and creativity. There are some digressions about food and the writing style can be off putting and this kept the book from being a 5 but overall it is a great book and very worthwhile for its historical information. I will definitely check out her other books. Show Less
LibraryThing member carolfoisset
I loved parts of this book and other parts seemed to drag a bit. I really connected with the characters and thought the author did a masterful job with the setting descriptions. I'm not a foodie, so some of those sections were not my favorite (foodies would love this book).
I realize the author had
I did find this perspective on the internment camps very well done and thought provoking, as well as the water situation.
For me, parts of the book were a 4 and others a 3.5
I realize the author had
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a stroke before the book was finished and her daughter helped her complete it and that could have had an effect on the ending. For me, it was a disappointment. For certain characters it was abrupt and the end seemed to just cut off.I did find this perspective on the internment camps very well done and thought provoking, as well as the water situation.
For me, parts of the book were a 4 and others a 3.5
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LibraryThing member nancyadair
You can’t save what you don’t love.
from Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins
Rocky’s inherited wealth could have meant an easy life on the East Coast. But after his father’s death, he headed West, determined to make his own way in the world. He built the ranch himself. It wasn’t like
Then, President Theodore Roosevelt signed away the water rights to the L. A. Water Authority. It made possible the city’s growth, but the lake dried up and turned to toxic dust. Rocky fought for the land, determined to save what he loved. Caught in an act of terrorism, he made an enemy.
After his wife’s death, his twin sister Cas left her musical career and her life in Europe to care for her niece, Sunny. Cas inspired Sunny’s love of food and cooking, taking her across America and Europe to educate her palate. Sunny’s meals at the café are legendary. Her impulsive brother Stryker joined the service and was in Hawaii in 1942 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He had married and had twins, but no one knows what happened to any of them.
History had forced itself into their lives.
Men arrived in town to set up the Manzanar Interment Camp for Japanese Americans. Schiff, a Chicago Jew, is sent to oversee the operation. Knowing that in Germany he himself would be in a camp, he imagines ways of improving the lives of the internees. Rocky befriends him. Schiff falls for Sunny. But romance must wait, for history has made its claims on their lives.
Thirst. You have to want it, to have the perseverance, self-reliance, stamina.
from Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins
It’s a big book filled with unforgettable characters, in a remarkable time and a stark and beautiful land. I noted line after line of insight or beauty, sharing two as Sunday Sentences for the best lines I read that week.
I found myself remembering the woman in my husband’s office who had spent her teens at Manzanar and the stories she shared. Wiggins describes the internees arriving at camp, dressed in their finest clothing, and you can’t help but understand these people were just like you. Sunny hands out oranges; a man asks for the box the oranges came in: he had owned the orchard. It is a startling scene.
There is so much in this book, it deserves a second reading with its diverse themes. How we have used the environment. How we treat ethnic groups. Foodies will glory in the descriptions of food. It is a love story about the land, the bonds of family, and love. It is heart breaking and yet hopeful.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for a free book.
from Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins
Rocky’s inherited wealth could have meant an easy life on the East Coast. But after his father’s death, he headed West, determined to make his own way in the world. He built the ranch himself. It wasn’t like
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Waldon’s Pond, the retreat for his inspiration Thoreau, but he had the open sky and the wildness and the Sierras on the horizon, and he had found God in the land.Then, President Theodore Roosevelt signed away the water rights to the L. A. Water Authority. It made possible the city’s growth, but the lake dried up and turned to toxic dust. Rocky fought for the land, determined to save what he loved. Caught in an act of terrorism, he made an enemy.
After his wife’s death, his twin sister Cas left her musical career and her life in Europe to care for her niece, Sunny. Cas inspired Sunny’s love of food and cooking, taking her across America and Europe to educate her palate. Sunny’s meals at the café are legendary. Her impulsive brother Stryker joined the service and was in Hawaii in 1942 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He had married and had twins, but no one knows what happened to any of them.
History had forced itself into their lives.
Men arrived in town to set up the Manzanar Interment Camp for Japanese Americans. Schiff, a Chicago Jew, is sent to oversee the operation. Knowing that in Germany he himself would be in a camp, he imagines ways of improving the lives of the internees. Rocky befriends him. Schiff falls for Sunny. But romance must wait, for history has made its claims on their lives.
Thirst. You have to want it, to have the perseverance, self-reliance, stamina.
from Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins
It’s a big book filled with unforgettable characters, in a remarkable time and a stark and beautiful land. I noted line after line of insight or beauty, sharing two as Sunday Sentences for the best lines I read that week.
I found myself remembering the woman in my husband’s office who had spent her teens at Manzanar and the stories she shared. Wiggins describes the internees arriving at camp, dressed in their finest clothing, and you can’t help but understand these people were just like you. Sunny hands out oranges; a man asks for the box the oranges came in: he had owned the orchard. It is a startling scene.
There is so much in this book, it deserves a second reading with its diverse themes. How we have used the environment. How we treat ethnic groups. Foodies will glory in the descriptions of food. It is a love story about the land, the bonds of family, and love. It is heart breaking and yet hopeful.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for a free book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mojomomma
A family living in the desert of Southern California experience Pearl Harbor and the build up of World War II. Then the federal government moves in to set up a Japanese internment camp.
LibraryThing member tangledthread
This is a sweeping novel that covers a family saga in Owens Valley, CA from the turn of the 20th century to post WWII. Rockwell Rhodes (Rocky) falls in love with and settles in the verdant valley as a way to escape his overbearing millionaire father in New York. Shortly thereafter, Teddy Roosevelt
Then the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor initiates the creation of the Japanese internment camps and the introduction of Schiff, a Jewish lawyer who works for the war department. He is to create and supervise the Manzanar internment camp adjacent to Rocky's property.
There are at least three love stories in this saga: the one between Rocky and his wife who has died from polio at the start of the novel, the one between Schiff and Sunny (Rocky's daughter), and between Cass (Rocky's twin sister) and Lyndon Finn.
This is the kind of novel that you can inhabit and become homesick for once you finish the story. Added to the story itself, is the story of its creation when the author, Marianne Wiggins, suffered a massive stroke before the novel was completed. Her daughter worked diligently and enlisted the help of others to complete the story without changing the voice of the novel.
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turns the land over to the Los Angeles water authority which siphons the water away from the once agrarian landscape turning into desert. Thus begins Rocky's life long pursuit of water for the valley.Then the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor initiates the creation of the Japanese internment camps and the introduction of Schiff, a Jewish lawyer who works for the war department. He is to create and supervise the Manzanar internment camp adjacent to Rocky's property.
There are at least three love stories in this saga: the one between Rocky and his wife who has died from polio at the start of the novel, the one between Schiff and Sunny (Rocky's daughter), and between Cass (Rocky's twin sister) and Lyndon Finn.
This is the kind of novel that you can inhabit and become homesick for once you finish the story. Added to the story itself, is the story of its creation when the author, Marianne Wiggins, suffered a massive stroke before the novel was completed. Her daughter worked diligently and enlisted the help of others to complete the story without changing the voice of the novel.
Show Less
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2024)
Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards (Finalist — Fiction — 2023)
Golden Poppy Book Award (Winner — Fiction — 2022)
Spur Award (Winner — 2023)
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2022)
Pages
544
ISBN
1416571264 / 9781416571261
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