With the publication of this excerpt from Properties of Thirst, Alta Journal is pleased to begin a five-part serialization of the opening section of the new novel by National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins. The book is a multigenerational saga of California in which rancher Rocky Rhodes battles the Los Angeles Water corporation against the backdrop of World War II, the internment of Japanese Americans, and the death of his wife.
Each week, starting July 11, we’ll publish online the next portion from this first section, titled “The First Property of Thirst Is an Element of Surprise.” Visit altaonline.com/serials to keep reading and to sign up for email notifications when each new installment is available.
YOU CAN’T SAVE WHAT YOU DON’T LOVE.
—he knew that. Christ, he’d learned that from the cradle, in his father’s house, at the knee of someone whose fierce love of money poured like baptizing water over every aspect of their lives. If you want to keep a thing alive (like this business, son) you need to will it. No one ever made his fortune from the milk of human kindness. Thirst. You have to want it, have to have the perseverance, self-reliance, stamina.
—all that. His father’s frothings at the mouth.
—man stood sixty inches on his toes, could knock a person backwards with his pixie apoplexies, carnal heat for making money—knock a person down: his son, especially.
Hadn’t called him “Punch” for nothing.
—christ he’d jump up on a table—full regalia—lifty shoes, the twill, the vest, the fob the starch the silk the onyx links and he would start to punch a person, punch a person with his finger, punch a person in the chest, digit homing heartward like a ferret on a rat: he would even treat his wife that way.
—go at Rocky’s mother on the stairs or to and what , while Cas and Rocky cowered on the landing:
