Kristin Vukovic ‘09 Explores Identity and Home in Debut Novel
Writing alumna Kristin Vukovic '09 has published her debut novel The Cheesemaker’s Daughter (Regalo Press, 2024). The book, set in the year before Croatia joins the European Union, explores questions of identity and the meaning of home, exploring how we survive inherited and personal traumas, and what it means to heal and reinvent oneself.
In the Cheesemaker’s Daughter, New Yorker Marina Maržić returns to her native Croatian island where she helps her father with his struggling cheese factory, Sirana. Forced to confront her divided Croatian-American identity and her past as a refugee from the former Yugoslavia, Marina moves in with her parents on Pag and starts a new life working at Sirana. As she gradually settles back into a place that was once home, her life becomes inextricably intertwined with their island’s cheese. When her past with the son of a rival cheesemaker stokes further unrest on their divided island, she must find a way to save Sirana—and in the process, learn to belong on her own terms.
“I’ve visited Croatia more than two dozen times, exploring my Croatian heritage and doing travel writing assignments for various publications," said Vukovic. "Place is definitely a character in my debut novel. The idea came to me in 2011 while reporting on a cheese festival for the now-defunct Croatian Chronicle. The island’s way of life was so different than my daily existence in New York City, and I became obsessed with Pag—its barren, moonscape terrain and people’s connection to the land, sheep and cheese. I mostly visited Pag during the summer months, but was also able to experience the island in the off-season when I spent a month doing research there from mid-September until mid-October.”
For Vuković, capturing the seasonal rhythms and their impact on people and cheese was crucial.
“January cheese is different than June cheese due to grazing and climate conditions, and while the summer is frenzied with tourists and festivals, the fall tempo slows down,” she said. “I spent a lot of time speaking with locals, and I was able to accompany shepherds into pastures and watch sheep shearing and feeding in the spring, an experience which definitely enhanced the atmospheric descriptions. Scenes in the novel also take place in the nearby city of Zadar, as well as Motovun, a medieval hilltop town in Istria; I relied on memories from my previous travels, and also embellished the settings with my imagination.”
Kristin Vuković’s work has appeared in The New York Times, BBC Travel, BBC Good Food Magazine, AFAR, Travel + Leisure, Coastal Living, Hemispheres, Virtuoso, The Magazine, and Public Books, among many others. In 2016, she was named a “40 Under 40” honoree by The National Federation of Croatian Americans Cultural Foundation. In 2017, she was the recipient of a Zlatna Penkala (Golden Pen) award for her writing about Croatia. In 2019, her BBC Travel piece “Dalmatia’s Fjaka State of Mind” won first place in the Society of American Travel Writers Eastern Chapter Contest, Miscellaneous category.