Properties of Thirst

Properties of Thirst
About This Copy
Condition: 
New
Signed Copy?: 
No

Pulitzer-Prize winner Marianne Wiggins returns with Properties of Thirst, a story of land and inheritance, and an examination of a changing American landscape during one of this country’s darkest periods. Set against the backdrop of World War II, Properties of Thirst is an epic story of one family’s unbreakable bond. The Rhodes family is at the center of the story. Rocky Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the Los Angeles Water Corporation. He lost his beloved wife, Lou, years earlier and raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, on the ranch alongside his sister.  With the country on the brink of war, Stryker enlists in the navy, and soon his family is forced to endure another senseless tragedy. Now more than ever, Rocky is determined to hold onto the only home his children have ever known. This goal is further complicated when the US government begins construction on a Japanese internment camp on the edge of the property, and Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he’s battled for years. 

 

Marianne Wiggins is the author of eight books of fiction including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen and two short story collections. For her novel Evidence of Things Unseen she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. She has won a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Heidinger Kafka Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She lives in Los Angeles.

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$28.00
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SKU: 9781416571261P
9781416571261
Primary Author: 
Marianne Wiggins
Binding Type: 
Hardcover
Publisher: 
Simon & Schuster
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.
Publication Date: 
08/02/2022