The Cheesemakers Daughter, Kristin Vukovic
The Cheesemakers Daughter, Kristin Vukovic
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The Cheesemaker's Daughter

Author: Kristin Vukovic

Narrator: Sophie Amoss

Unabridged: 10 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 08/20/2024

Categories: Fiction, Family Life, Women


Synopsis

When Marina’s father summons her to their Croatian island from New York—and away from her evaporating marriage—to help him save his failing cheese factory, she must face her rocky past and an uncertain future.

How do you begin again when the past threatens to drown you?

In the throes of an unraveling marriage, New Yorker Marina Maržic returns to her native Croatian island where she helps her father with his struggling cheese factory, Sirana. Forced to confront her divided Croatian-American identity and her past as a refugee from the former Yugoslavia, Marina moves in with her parents on Pag and starts a new life working at Sirana. As she gradually settles back into a place that was once home, her life becomes inextricably intertwined with their island’s cheese. When her past with the son of a rival cheesemaker stokes further unrest on their divided island, she must find a way to save Sirana—and in the process, learn to belong on her own terms.

Exploring underlying cultural and ethnic tensions in a complex region mired in centuries of war and turmoil, The Cheesemaker’s Daughter takes us through the year before Croatia joins the European Union. On the dramatic moonscape island of Pag, we are transported to strikingly barren vistas, medieval towns, and the mesmerizing Adriatic Sea, providing a rare window into a tight-knit community with strong family ties in a corner of the world where divisions are both real and imagined. Asking questions central to identity and the meaning of home, this richly drawn story reckons with how we survive inherited and personal traumas, and what it means to heal and reinvent oneself in the face of life’s challenges.

“The Cheesemaker’s Daughter takes us to Pag, an island where sheep’s milk becomes curds, partners become rivals, exes become new possibilities, and one woman finally becomes who she was meant to be. Deeply researched and fully inhabited, this novel is a thrilling, transformative read.”—Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth, finalist for the National Book Award

Reviews

Goodreads review by Moonkiszt on April 29, 2025

The Cheesemaker's Daughter took me to a place I've rarely read about in fiction or non-fiction - there was a travel feel to it sometimes that was exactly what I needed - whisking me off to Croatia, Serbia, and Paris. oh! and the Basque country, too! Marina returns to her home in Croatia after hav......more

Goodreads review by the society of inkdrinkers on April 02, 2024

The Cheesemaker’s Daughter by Kristin Vuković is a contemporary fiction novel featuring Marina, who travels back to her home country of Croatia to help with the family business of cheese making. The business is in financial trouble, Mariana tries to find solutions and how to compete with a local, ri......more

Goodreads review by Chispita on September 23, 2024

terrifically depressing my god. not at all what i expected. learned some cheesemaking and some Croatian joining-the-eu-ten-years-ago history but holy crap was this just a neverending sad fest. crap brother family feud health problems losing the family business backstabbing losing trust surprise twis......more

Goodreads review by Aquila on August 26, 2024

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to listen to The Cheesemaker's Daughter by Kristin Vukovic in exchange for my honest feedback. The story begins on a rainy day in June. Marina is returning to her childhood home after difficult times with her husband Marco in New York. Back home, M......more

Goodreads review by Bookguide on August 25, 2024

I received a complimentary copy of this book as a digital ARC from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Although I enjoyed reading this book about a woman returning to her family home on the Croatian island of Pag, it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, but that is prob......more