Marina Maržić’s life is in disarray. She is in her native Croatia, uncertain about returning to the marriage, job, and life she abruptly left behind after a one-way flight from New York City. On Pag Island, she has her Croatian family and their long-running – but recently struggling – cheese factory, Sirana.
But Marina left Pag as a teenager, when Yugoslavia was plunged into war, and hasn’t lived there since. And now she has returned (alone) as a woman in a troubled marriage, and feels “split, halved like a summer fig.”
Kristin Vuković’s captivating debut novel, The Cheesemaker’s Daughter (Regalo Press, August 2024), explores the journey of a Croatian American woman in her thirties whose life and sense of belonging are suspended between two cultures and continents. The story takes us to a Croatian island town with dry stone walls made out of limestone, a coastline whipped by relentless mountain winds, and centuries-old olive groves where a tree is “impartial to the changing of borders and empires.”
Croatia is not just a place or a setting. It embodies so much natural beauty, history, and complexity that it transforms into another living character. Vuković, who has Croatian roots, understands this. As readers, we are not only deeply invested in how Marina will navigate this fork in her life, but whether Pag will remain a part of it. We learn about this magical but challenging island through its fresh fish and nutty cheese, its deeply ingrained beliefs about the role of women and marriage, and the remnants of Yugoslavia’s civil war that seep into family and business relationships.
In this place where gossip is “fuelled by jealousy, caught on like frenzied bleats in a herd of sheep,” Marina confronts a childhood love, a decades-old rivalry marked by loss, betrayal, and family secrets. As an immigrant woman, she contends with an identity split by war, divided between the rigidity and fast pace of an American city and the slow, sun-soaked life on a Croatian island.
While places can root us, what happens when we are uprooted from home? What happens when we have been absent from our motherland for so long, the locals mistake us for tourists? To define her future, Marina must examine everything from her cultural and professional identities to her commitment to family and their beloved cheese business.
Pag’s uniqueness is heightened when juxtaposed against the cities Marina travels to. Zadar is bigger and has a pedestrian promenade – like all coastal Croatian cities – as well as an architectural marvel in the form of a sea organ that plays music based on movements of the Adriatic’s waves. In London, Croatia’s blue skies and azure sea are replaced with the greys and browns of cloudy skies, the black of umbrellas and brisk-walking suits. And while it is tough to compete with the bustle and charm of springtime Paris, it is just a city Marina visits for a cheese competition and cannot compare to her home island where her family has fed generations with their salty and herby product.
The Cheesemaker’s Daughter navigates the pushes and pulls of an immigrant woman’s identity and the role of family – the relatives we leave behind as immigrants and refugees, and the new connections we create in our adopted countries. It gives readers a front-row seat in the enthralling world of cheesemaking, from the oiling of the wheels in the factory to the thrill of competition at the World Cheese Awards. It is a novel enhanced by contrasts – island vs city; tradition vs novelty; embracing the past vs moving on. Bubbling with unexpected twists and connections, it is a gripping story that will encourage readers to examine their own identity and what makes a place home.
