SUNDANCE NEWS RELEASE
What: Lawrence Coates will give a talk about California wine and Prohibition, followed by a reading from his latest novel The Garden of the World (University of Nevada Press).
Where: Sundance Books and Music, 121 California Ave.
When: Thursday, May 17, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
About the Book
California’s Santa Clara Valley was once home to a vigorous wine industry. The Garden of the World is the tale of a pioneer winemaking family headed by Paul Tourneau, a fiercely ambitious vintner determined to make the finest wines in California. His plans are disrupted by a phylloxera epidemic at the beginning of the twentieth century, the trials of national Prohibition and the bitter alienation of his older son. Played out against the vividly depicted seasonal rhythms of vineyard life, this is a moving saga of betrayal, loss and the harsh consequences of unbreakable ambition.
About the Author
Lawrence Coates has worked as a third mate in the Merchant Marine, as a freelance journalist in Mexico and as a high school teacher in Paris. Born in Berkeley, he served four years in the Coast Guard and another four in the Merchant Marine, spending time in the North Atlantic, the Hawaiian Island chain and the Arabian Sea during the Iranian hostage crisis. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz and gained fluency in Spanish while studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain. He taught in the Lycee Charlemagne in Paris after completing a master’s degree at Berkeley and went on to earn his doctorate at the University of Utah. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in fiction, and his work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Missouri Review, Greensboro Review and elsewhere. His first novel, The Blossom Festival, won the Western States Book Award for Fiction and was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. His second novel, The Master of Monterey, was published in 2003. His third novel, The Garden of the World, was published in February of this year.
