Publishers Weekly
07/24/2023
Gumbiner’s suspenseful sophomore novel (after The Boatbuilder) follows the struggles of a California grape-grower and his family during the fire season that shatters their quiet lives. As summer hits, Benjamin Hecht, 65, becomes concerned over the dry conditions on the family’s farm in the foothills near the small town of Natoma. Things are tight for Ben, who usually sells grapes to two wineries, and his wife, Ada, a writer, but after she finishes her next book, they plan to pay off the loan on their property. Ben has a strained relationship with his son, Yoel, in part because a decade earlier, Ben served 18 months in prison for growing marijuana. One day, smoke inundates the hills and an evacuation order forces the family to flee. Later, they return to find their farm mostly spared but their outbuildings burnt, along with Ada’s manuscript, which she mistakenly left behind. They worry they’ll have to sell the farm, but Ben decides to partner with a young winemaker, and they push to harvest the grapes. Gumbiner skillfully builds tension as the Hecht family’s hard work in the vineyards plays out, pulling them together, even as they ignore the red-flag fire warnings and face the uncertainty of whether the wine produced will be potentially ruined by smoke taint. Readers will be riveted. Agent: Martha Wydysh, Trident Media Group. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
A New Yorker Best Book of 2023: Set in the foothills of California’s gold country, this dread-laden novel follows a family who make their living cultivating grapes for winemaking as they attempt to resume their lives in the wake of a wildfire. After an evacuation, they return to the same land, but their environment—increasingly marred by drought, fire, and high temperatures—presents a cascade of fears: not just death and injury from fire but power outages, dangerous air quality, and smoke that might taint their grapes and thus take away their livelihood. The father’s detailed awareness of the region’s weather produces a sense of looming crisis; he notes how often once unusual events now occur—a set of circumstances that make it “hard not to wonder where the bottom was.”
"The prose shines in its depictions of nature and setting, as when Gumbiner compares burnt trees to 'spires of obsidian.' Near the end of the novel . . . the reader must also locate the sacred in the natural and mourn all that humanity is losing as we hurtle toward a decimated planet."
—Edan Lepucki, Alta Journal
"Set in the foothills of California’s gold country, this dread-laden novel follows a family who make their living cultivating grapes for winemaking as they attempt to resume their lives in the wake of a wildfire. . . The father’s detailed awareness of the region’s weather produces a sense of looming crisis."
—The New Yorker
"“Fire in the Canyon” certainly has mythic overtones. It is a kind of Steinbeck saga with more modern catastrophes in mind; instead of the depredations of the Dust Bowl and the Depression, the Hechts face the twin crises of economic precarity and climate change."
—Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times
"Gumbiner writes with tremendous heart for his characters, as well as meticulous detail about their everyday lives tending their crops, making wine and finding community in a disorienting moment of environmental precarity."
—Jessica Zack, San Francisco Chronicle
"There is action and drama, but it's not a collage of IPCC report scenarios, it's a real and human story about what happens when a family's own unspectacular life becomes part of the global drama of global warming."
—Alexis Madrigal, KQED Forum
"Gumbiner crafts an important story, the fictional equivalent of outdoor warning sirens screaming above smoldering pine trees. An engaging, Steinbeckian look at climate change and its emotional costs."
—Kirkus Reviews
"A soulful masterpiece about the climate crisis in California."
—Gabe Hudson, Kurt Vonnegut Radio
"Suspenseful . . . Gumbiner skillfully builds tension as the Hecht family’s hard work in the vineyards plays out, pulling them together, even as they ignore the red-flag fire warnings and face the uncertainty of whether the wine produced will be potentially ruined by smoke taint. Readers will be riveted."
—Publishers Weekly
"Daniel Gumbiner is fast becoming a sort of 21st century Steinbeck, authoritatively illuminating life in California, with all its glories and calamity. Filled with vivid characters and deep knowledge of the land, this is a commanding second novel."
—Dave Eggers, author of The Circle
"There’s some golden hue or quality that tinges these pages. I have felt for a long time like we need more California novels, and since reading his first novel, more writers like Daniel Gumbiner."
—Tommy Orange, author of There There
"Stunning. Daniel Gumbiner is one of our greatest living writers on and of the American West, and this book is a thing of beauty."
—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness
Kirkus Reviews
2023-07-26
A rural California family, struggling to make financial and emotional ends meet, faces the destructive threat of wildfires.
In the gold country of the California foothills, a place of picturesque natural beauty, residents know full well that conditions are always primed for a forest fire, that, in the words of Wallace Stegner—used here as an epigraph—the beautiful land ultimately “imposes itself” on them, and “sets the rules for [their] existence.” Briefly imprisoned a decade ago for growing medical marijuana, 65-year-old grape farmer Ben Hecht has been keeping a low profile, a little tired but grateful to have returned to his challenging yet rewarding farm life and to Ada, his novelist wife. Like early-evening sunlight streaming down the mountains, their world lately has been looking good, even promising. Their son, Yoel, has been painfully estranged from Ben, but now, back home after working in Los Angeles, seems surprisingly interested in reconciliation. Family and new friends surround them, proffering glasses of good wine or an occasional joint, just as they are surrounded by a happy menagerie of dogs, chickens, geese, and emus. There has even emerged the distinct possibility of Ben starting a wine-making business. Then, one day, a distant black plume of smoke changes everything. The wildfire that eventually tears through the area hurts the Hechts financially, but it is the obliteration of Ada’s work in progress that tips the family into a tailspin—this, and Yoel’s sudden involvement with an environmental group preparing to move from complaint to physical action, and Ben’s now-constant, justified worry of another, greater fire that would plunge them into poverty. Gumbiner examines the minutiae of the Hecht family’s life, their viniculture, their industry, their mellow California woods culture, sometimes to the detriment of narrative action, but his characters glow tenderly on the page. They are a good group of people to root for, at the shifting mercy of the winds that blow past their heads, trapped inside an ecosystem heating up steadily, past the point of hopeful disregard. Gumbiner crafts an important story, the fictional equivalent of outdoor warning sirens screaming above smoldering pine trees.
An engaging, Steinbeckian look at climate change and its emotional costs.
