Category:
Literary Fiction
Two writers travel to California’s Wine Country to interview a man who whispers to grapes. He walks through vines speaking in ancient tongues and whispering timeless tales that permeate the vintage.
The writers ultimately encounter a powerful Pacific storm and find refuge in a remote wine estate with four strangers. With no electricity, no cell signal, and no way down until morning --- the group spends the night picking out wines and taking turns telling the story of their life.
Their night together is at once an escape and a deliverance. Together they find harmony, breakthroughs, and new friends. Without smart technology, hyperlinks, neural networks, or search engines --- six strangers are brought together by stories of the heart, whispers from the earth, and wine.
The legend of the grape whisperer brings the reader back to the earth, the seasons of life, and the soul of man.
A new work of fiction by author Patricia Mahon is set to be released on October 30, 2025. A Night in the Vine is about two writers who travel to California wine country to find ‘the grape whisperer’ of the Central Coast. But when they encounter a powerful Pacific storm, they must find refuge in a remote wine estate with four strangers. With no electricity or cell signal in the manor house, the group spends the night drinking wine and taking turns telling the story of their life.
“This book has been a true labor of love,” said Mahon. “I started writing it before the Covid-19 outbreak and after we were masked up and isolated from each other for all those months, I revamped it as a post-pandemic narrative about the importance of human connections.”
The characters of A Night in the Vine are as vivid as each of their respective stories. They represent different genders, generations, and cultural orientations. They share feelings of love, loss, heartbreak, and perseverance. The two LA-based writers are joined by a young couple from Manhattan, a woman traveling alone from Europe, and a local widower who find common ground and existential breakthroughs in this age of artificial thought and manufactured heroes.
“While A Night in the Vine explores the vulnerabilities of its six characters, the seventh character is clearly the earth itself,” says Editor and Publicist Jasmine Bingham. “We hear ‘the screaming of entombed men’ — ‘their muted archeology crying to be heard,’ and it is the mystical grape whisperer who translates all those murmurs from the soil to the leaves and fruit of the vine.”
A Night in the Vine is another wakeup call from Mahon about the impact of disruptive technology and the deep sense of purpose and empowerment that can be achieved when we tell stories of the heart.
The book is infused with excerpts from classic literature which necessitated exclusive approvals from the estates of renowned authors like Ray Bradbury, Arthur Miller, William Carlos Williams, Sue Monk Kidd, and Paulo Coehlo. The novel also celebrates iconic vineyard properties and some of the most prized vintages of the Central Coast region.
Patricia Mahon is a dramatist, screenwriter and published poet who studied in New York, Oxford and Dublin. A Night in the Vine is her second novel. Her first book, Stories from the Age of Distraction: The Island was published in 2016 and was a Reader’s Favorite Book Award finalist and received the Literary Classics seal of approval.
This second novel by Mahon aligns with her familiar themes of modern distraction, isolation and disconnection and their impact on human psychology, vernacular and the evolution of literature. And one of the strongest messages of this latest work is that the earth speaks to each of us … if we choose to listen.
A Night in the Vine is a Vanguard imprint of Pegasus Publishers out of the United Kingdom and will be available on Amazon starting November 1, 2025. The book can also be preordered HERE.
|
