Night Wine: A Novel

When young Italian immigrant, Amerigo Pugliesi, arrives in New York in 1916, he tells the immigration officer on Ellis Island his full name and declares his wealth: "I gotta seventeen dollar and a fifty-four cents."

With some training in the French and Italian vineyards, he's determined to become a winemaker. Moving West by working on the railroad, he finally arrives in Napa Valley. He finds, however, that he cannot even find a job as a barrel washer.

After being drafted and wounded in WWI, h...