Book Review: The Cheesemaker's Daughter

What does it mean to return home? For many it’s an opportunity to re-connect with family and friends and reminisce about the good times shared. For some however, returning home isn’t always a happy prospect.  It’s important to consider why do people even leave home to begin with? There can be a lot of emotional trauma tied behind the memories of the people and land you once shared, hence the desire to run away and never come back.  Running away from the trauma doesn’t get rid of it however, it just distances it from you.  Sometimes the braver choice is to return home and face that trauma head on in hopes of healing and rediscovery. That idea is the core concept behind my latest read, The Cheesemaker’s Daughter.

Written by Kristin Vukovic and published in August 2024, The Cheesemaker’s Daughter is a contemporary drama story based around a one woman’s struggle to recognize her place in the world. Marina Maržić is a Croatian immigrant who lived a lot of her adult life in America after her father sent her out there to escape the Yugoslav Wars. Her father’s profession is that of a cheesemaker, their business Sirana is based out on a small coastal island of Pag and has recently hit hard times financially. Using the family situation as an excuse to escape her dying marriage, Marina flies back home and finds herself facing a lot of unhealed wounds between family and friends she must attempt to heal while trying to help her father get their cheese making business back on track.

The core themes of this book’s narrative are very well established.  I’ve read a lot of contemporary family drama’s relating to trauma and toxic relationships, but it’s the format of which this book projects these themes which makes it feel unique in comparison.  The dilemma behind bringing prosperity back to her father’s cheesemaking business feels like the central conduit for the narrative and Vukovic does a grand job making it feel like a legitimate window into that world as apposed to a cheap foundation. I swear I’ve learned more about cheesemaking reading this book than I ever knew prior. I love how fleshed out Marina is as a character also, her internal processing and perspectives on the situations and relationships she’s struggling with make her feel like a genuine character and it’s wonderful to see her reflect and grow like a genuine person over the course of the narrative.

Thematically, this book was way more grounded than I ever expected it to be.  Reading the synopsis, you would be mistaken for thinking this was just a family drama with a quirky twist to it.  In actuality, the book tackles a lot of serious and compelling concepts like war, familial trauma, broken relationships and miscarriages.  It can be heavy stuff but Vukovic is able to represent this stuff cohesively and respectfully which is a truly commendable feat. For such a small page count, the book is also remarkably paced when you consider all the plot arcs and concepts it has to juggle.  Nothing in this book feels all that short-handed as it’s given an appropriate level of exposure throughout the course of its story.

I happily recommend The Cheesemaker’s Daughter; it takes what is a fairly common genre of storytelling and conveys it in a format which feels genuinely different without compromising on its core quality.  Its emotional core can feel quite heavy so I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re not in the right headspace to handle these concepts, but if you are I genuinely feel you’ll come away from reading this book as satisfied as I was.