Two years after the successful publication of her first historical novel, “The Vintner’s Daughter,” Kristen Harnisch of Darien is coming out with the sequel, “The California Wife,” and she says it’s been a different writing experience.
“It took me 14 years to write the first book,” Harnisch said, and she was learning how to do it along the way, and largely independently, until the book was sold to a publisher. “This time, it’s taken me 18 months, with the help of a great editing team at HarperCollins.”
Harnisch said she’s grateful to a lot of people and organizations for helping make the initial book a success, and they’ve helped to make this book a smoother ride.
The Darien Community Association is hosting a talk by Harnisch and a book signing at the association’s annual meeting at 9:30 a.m. on May 19, which is open to the public.
“The California Wife” will be available in book stores on May 10, and Barrett Bookstore will be selling it at the DCA event, as well.
Lanphier Day Spa is planning a reception for the book in early June. (“My hair stylist at Lanphier said, ‘We have got to do an event for you,’ and the owner agreed, Harnisch said.)
When a literary agent took up Harnisch’s original book and was able to sell it to HarperCollins Canada (and then She Writes Press in Berkeley, Calif. — both now publishers of the sequel) the agent relayed a question from HarperCollins: Is this a stand-alone historical novel or is this a set?
Harnisch immediately said yes, of course it was a sequel — without having any plans at all for one. But instead of being harder, the process became easier — there was a very professional editing team at HarperCollins who was waiting for the manuscript in stages, and that spurred on the new author.
“I never wrote that much, that fast in my life,” Harnisch said. A wife and mother of two children, she took to writing regularly early in the morning and late at night.
The original book took the main character from a vineyard in France to California Wine Country, where she got married and experienced the ups and downs of the wine industry of that time. The sequel takes her and her family from 1897 to 1906, with a much bigger cast of characters and a broader scope.
A Description of the book from Harnisch’s publicist:
Beginning in the same scene in which her first novel ended, Harnisch’s sweeping sequel (which also works as a stand-alone) takes us back to 1897, when Sara Thibault has returned to France following the devastating end to her relationship with Philippe Lemieux, the vintner with whom she fell in love in California.
Reunited and soon to be wed, Sara and Philippe struggle to manage two vineyards, his much-esteemed Eagle’s Run in Napa Valley and her humble family vineyard, Saint Martin, in the Loire Valley. Philippe, used to making his own decisions, doesn’t always include Sara, and she, fully aware of her talents as a vintner, challenges his omissions head-on at home and in the streets with other Suffragettes.
Troubles abound: the specter of Prohibition threatens their livelihood as do rival vintners, and ghosts from Philippe’s past might unravel the family he has just begun to build. As tensions mount, Sara welcomes the proximity of her dear friend Marie, a midwife who is the first woman selected to study surgery at Cooper Medical College in San Francisco.
From managing a new marriage to managing new businesses, from the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 to a small vineyard in France, from the rough streets of San Francisco to its newest college, Sara and her family charge into the 20th century—and readers will readily follow, rooting for them through every page.
“HarperCollins did a great deal of editing of the book — they really helped me build the story arcs,” Harnisch recalled. “It was like getting a crash course in writing.” She had already been taking writing courses and workshops as she wrote the first novel, but she found more to learn in working with the publishing house.
Kristen Harnisch (photo by Alix Martinez from Kristen Harnisch’s website)
“They challenged me: ‘Do you really need that character?’ or ‘Shouldn’t that character be developed a little more?'”
For both books, Harnisch said, “I want the reader to feel like they’re in the vineyard with the character, smelling what she smells and seeing what she sees — everything that the characters would.”
Once the manuscript was closer to publication, line-by-line editing got into smaller details, with copy editors getting involved. “It was very thorough — probably 10 people at HarperCollins had their hands on it,” she said.
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See also:
- How a Darienite Came to Write Her First Published Novel (Nov. 15, 2015)
- How Darienite Kristen Harnisch Got Her Novel Published (Nov. 16)
- Author Kristen Harnisch to Speak at Darien Community Association Annual Meeting (May 1, 2016)
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In addition to publicizing “The California Wife,” Harnisch is working on a women’s contemporary novel about four friends “who are desperately trying to survive midlife, with the disasters that happen in life,” and she’s beginning to research and think about a third historical novel in her vintner’s saga.
“It takes the family through the next generation, through World War I and Prohibition.”
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The California Wife
She Writes Press
Paperback, 419 pages, $17.95
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Being an author located in Darien has helped her in various ways — not only with publicizing events, but with a town library that helped her research the grape-growing and wine-making industries in France and California, and even with getting her first novel an audiobook publisher.
She met a narrator of audio books at a Darien Library event, and that led to a phone call from Blackstone Audio — and eventually a contract for the first book. Harnisch is now in the process of getting another agreement for “The California Wife.”
More local help has come in the form of a Darien High School intern to provide more help with research — a friend of Harnisch’s said her daughter would be interested, and the author thought it would be a good fit.
“I am so grateful for the support of all my friends, and all the people I know in Darien,” Harnisch said. “They just really made the book a success. It’s a real great community.”
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