Properties of Thirst, Marianne Wiggins
Properties of Thirst, Marianne Wiggins
List: $34.99 | Sale: $24.50
Club: $17.49

Properties of Thirst

Author: Marianne Wiggins

Narrator: Stephen Graybill, Gabra Zackman

Unabridged: 19 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/02/2022


Synopsis

A National Bestseller
A New Yorker Best Book of 2022

Fifteen years after the publication of Evidence of Things Unseen, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins returns with a “big, bold book” (USA TODAY) 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 “magnificent” (Colum McCann) 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.

About Marianne Wiggins

Marianne Wiggins is the author of eight novels, including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen, which 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 Venice, California. 

About Gabra Zackman

Gabra Zackman knows romance. Her clever and “thrilling romantic caper” (Library Journal) Bod Squad series was inspired by the more than one hundred romance and women’s fiction titles she has narrated for audio. She divides her time between her native New York City and Denver, Colorado.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on August 08, 2022

There are such fully drawn characters and an in depth depiction of the time and place and events and the convergence of these characters with the events and with each other in this novel. I’ve been trying to think of a word to aptly describe it that hasn’t already been said about it. Its been called......more

Goodreads review by Tammy on June 22, 2022

This is the saga of the Rhodes family: historical in scope, multi-layered in narrative, and with characters that are richly drawn. Water rights, Japanese internment camps, love, loss, food, and music provide the skeleton of this exquisite and graceful novel. Another must-read.......more

Goodreads review by Melissa on July 30, 2022

I was immediately interested in this book when I read the description concerning water rights and the protection of beloved California ranchland (as I sit smack-dab in the Arizona desert and parts of our state face water restrictions that seem, also, to cater to “the many vs. the few.” i.e., Rancher......more

Goodreads review by Juanjo on May 13, 2024

No puedes salvar lo que no amas. ¿Pero qué es el amor? Diariamente disponemos de un sinfín de comodidades y privilegios que pasan desapercibidos y damos por sentados. Estamos acostumbrados a pulsar un interruptor y que se haga la luz. A que con un aparato que cabe en un bolsillo podamos estar conectad......more

Goodreads review by Mark on December 29, 2022

This highly acclaimed novel sets out to narrate the events of World War II and Japanese internment in the lives of the wealthy Rhodes family who occupy a ranch in the Owens Valley of California. Waging a futile war against the Los Angeles Water Authority that has diverted the valley's rivers and aqu......more


Quotes

"The consistent, fluid, and engrossing nature of this majestic novel is rendered even more remarkable by the fact that it was completed after the author suffered a massive stroke in 2016. Set in California during WWII, when Japanese–Americans were being interned by the U.S. Government, this ambitious saga of family, romance, and grief is poignantly narrated by Gabra Zackman and Stephen Greybill."