From New York Times bestselling author Jennifer
Chiaverini, a powerful and dramatic Prohibition-era story that
follows the fortunes of Rosa Diaz Barclay, a woman who plunges into
the unknown for the safety of her children and the love of a good
but flawed man.
As the nation grapples with the strictures of Prohibition, Rosa
Barclay lives on a Southern California rye farm with her volatile
husband, John, who has lately found another source of income far
outside the federal purview.
Mother to eight children, Rosa mourns the loss of four who
succumbed to the mysterious wasting disease that is now afflicting
young Ana and Miguel. Two daughters born of another father are in
perfect health. When an act of violence shatters Rosa''s resolve to
maintain her increasingly dangerous existence, she flees with the
children and her precious heirloom quilts to the mesa where she
last saw her beloved mother alive.
As a flash flood traps them in a treacherous canyon, only one
man is brave-or foolhardy-enough to come to their rescue: Lars
Jorgenson, Rosa''s first love and the father of her healthy
daughters. Together they escape to Berkeley, where a leading
specialist offers their only hope of saving Ana and Miguel. Here in
northern California, they create new identities to protect
themselves from Rosa''s vengeful husband, the police who seek her
for questioning, and the gangsters Lars reported to Prohibition
agents-officers representing a department often as corrupt as the
Mob itself. Ever mindful that his youthful alcoholism provoked Rosa
to spurn him, Lars nevertheless supports Rosa''s daring plan to
stake their futures on a struggling Sonoma Valley vineyard-despite
the recent hardships of local winemakers whose honest labors at
viticulture have, through no fault of their own, become
illegal.
