Valley Fever
A Novel
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A razor-sharp, cross-generational tragicomedy set in California's wine-soaked Central Valley.
Ingrid Palamede never returns to places she's lived in the past. For her, "whole neighborhoods, whole cities, can be ruined by the reasons you left." But when a breakup leaves her heartbroken and homeless, she's forced to return to her childhood home of Fresno, California. Back in the real wine country, where grapes are grown for mass producers like Gallo and Kendall-Jackson, Ingrid must confront her aging parents and their financial woes, soured friendships, and blissfully bad decisions. But along the way, she rediscovers her love for the land, her talent for harvesting grapes, and a deep fondness and forgiveness for the very first place she ever left.
With all the sharp-tongued wit of her first novel, Rules for Saying Goodbye, Katherine Taylor examines high-class, small-town life among the grapes—on the vine or soaked in vodka—in Valley Fever, a blisteringly funny, ferociously intelligent, and deeply moving novel of self-discovery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With crisp, often droll prose, Taylor (Rules for Saying Goodbye) has written an affecting second novel, set in California's Central Valley. Ingrid Palamede, a daughter who departed her home town when she was young, returns to her parents' vineyard after a crushing breakup, under the guise of helping her ailing father with his business. Effortlessly woven in are various threads of Fresno local color that make up a landscape of love and tension: a high school boyfriend whose touch lingers, an ex best friend who worms her way back into Ingrid's heart, an employee who is stealing from her father. The lulls of domestic ennui and nostalgia are broken up by Ingrid's sharp and humorous observations about life and the inevitable confrontation of adulthood. A breezy family saga, this story is also an ode to the decline of the valleys of California, with all their rustic beauty and hazy disenchantment.
