Scarsdale Native Laura Dave Publishes Fourth Novel

You know that feeling, the one you get in the pit of your stomach, when you suddenly realize that everything in your picture perfect life is about to fall apart? It's that day when you break up with your boyfriend, quit your job and lose your best friend. It's that awful moment when the bottom falls out, and all you want is to go home, back to your youth, where you can curl up in the comfortable security of your childhood. Perhaps you might find temporary relief if you could just escape for a moment, long enough to catch your breath and pretend that you are still cocooned, safely slumbering within your nascent hopes and dreams. Now imagine it's gotten so bad that you do actually trek all the way home, craving this shangri la, only to discover that the home, the safe haven you left, no longer exists.

This is the scenario that Laura Dave presents in her newest novel, Eight Hundred Grapes. Dave, a Scarsdale native, and bestselling author, hits her stride yet again in her fourth book (previous titles include London is the Best City in America, Penguin Books 2007, The Divorce Party, Penguin Books 2009 and The First Husband, Penguin Books 2012). A past president of Scarsdale High School and former resident of Quaker Ridge, Dave graduated from SHS in 1995. Although she now lives in Los Angeles, she is a Raider at heart (especially when it comes to basketball), and she makes sure to return to town periodically to visit with family and get her fill of all things Scarsdale.

In her latest release, Dave tells the story of Georgia Ford, the adult child of winemakers from Sonoma County, California. Georgia has long since flown the coop, relocating to Los Angeles, where she has become a successful attorney, way too big-time for her family's adorable little winery. She is engaged to a dapper Englishman who plans to transport her back to London with him after their wedding. Her parents' vineyard is little more than a novelty where she can hold a charming wedding reception before hopping across the pond to begin her real life. Everything is turning out perfectly for Georgia, just the way she has always planned.

Until it isn't. As the book opens, it's two weeks before the wedding, and Georgia has fled LA, at an emotional impasse, after serendipitously discovering that her fiancé, Ben, has a four year old daughter about whom he has told her precisely nothing. Father, child and ex-girlfriend happen to walk past the window while Georgia is at her final dress fitting. Making matters even worse, the child's mother is an internationally renowned movie star, complete with flawless skin, shimmering long hair and an impeccably sophisticated British accent. Georgia does the only thing she can think of. She runs home. In a moment of great panic, she drives nine consecutive hours to the safety of her parents' vineyard, her nuclear family, the security she has known her whole life. And she is still wearing her wedding dress, no less.

The only problem is that when she finally arrives, somewhat heartbroken and entirely over-caffeinated, in her hometown of Sebastol, CA, she discovers that nothing has remained the way she left it. Her parents' marriage is falling apart. Her mother is involved with a classical music composer who talks too much and wears too little clothing. Her father is in contract to sell their small biodynamic winery to a big box winemaker. Her brothers are at each other's throats, and there are secrets everywhere she looks.

Writing with a fast-paced, witty, and devastatingly nostalgic prose, Dave shows Georgia struggling to determine her next move. In the spirit of a Choose Your Own Adventure story, Dave has readers imagining how Georgia's life will unfold if she should decide to forgive Ben for his deceptive behavior, or conversely, if she should refuse his entreaties and return to LA without him, or perhaps never even return to LA at all. With a deft hand, Dave renders her characters with such subtlety that each scenario is replete with ambiguity. Nothing in this story is black and white.

With equal parts warmth and wryness, Dave dissects Georgia's emotions and lays her bare before the reader as she attempts to rebuild the life she thought she had left behind. As she tackles several weighty issues simultaneously, each of which compounds the others, Georgia begins to wonder whether the life she imagined during her childhood ever really existed. And now, she must decide whether to interfere in her parents' marital deterioration, whether to convince them to hold onto their romance and their vineyard, the very vineyard she had once been so anxious to leave behind. All of these conundrums help distract her from her own predicament, mainly whether her relationship with Ben is beyond salvation.

Aside from the absorbing details of this complicated tale, Dave writes with a contemporary flare that would make any story immensely readable. And let's not forget the theme the runs beneath the book in its entirety: wine, glorious wine! The details that Dave provides about California winemaking will leave readers feeling as though they have become mini-experts on American vintology. As Georgia navigates her personal issues, she does so against the backdrop of fulsome, flavorful grapes, lusciously rich soil, Sonoma sunsets and tannins that have been fermented, blended and loved to perfection.

Despite the somewhat light-hearted, chicklitty nature of this story of botched love and complicated family dynamics, there are clearly many deeper issues that Dave tackles throughout the tale (and it's not just about how tough it is to run a successful environmentally-friendly vineyard either). Tucked beneath the surface of this relatively quick story are questions about what it really means to commit to another person, how to preserve your own identity in a long-term relationship, when to compromise, and when to let go. Ultimately, Dave has created a well-balanced and insightful novel that is as engrossing as it is delicious. Buy the book here.

Contributor Jacqueline Berkell Friedland is a resident of Scarsdale and an MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, where she is studying fiction. She is a former attorney and law school professor. When she is not writing, Jacqueline can be found plowing through novels or chasing after her four young children.