When anyone tells Patricia Mahon she can’t do something, she’ll prove them wrong. It’s happened with sexist professors and stodgy editors, becoming part of the reason she took up fiction writing.
“You can’t tell people they can’t do something, especially when they’re creative because creative people can do whatever they want,” Mahon said. “That’s what I feel.”
Grape whisperer
A Night in the Vine is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble. Learn more about Patricia Mahon’s other works by visiting patriciamahon.com.
A lifelong student of literature, Mahon was writing poetry at a young age. Her mother saved the pages filled with the 6-year-old’s poems and coloring. Mahon stood out from the rest of the family—a steady line of doctors, lawyers, and businessmen—but her mother was also a writer.
From the time she started college at age 16 until she finished graduate school and started her career, Mahon was tested by the times. More than one professor cast doubt on the young writer’s abilities, even in front of the whole class. She remembered a professor saying she’d never be a screenwriter or a fiction writer, but both are true today.
“It was tough for a woman, to be honest,” the LA-based author said about her early career.
Writing remained Mahon’s focus, following her through jobs in the financial and pharmaceutical industries. She wrote short stories, poems, and a screenplay, but her mother kept encouraging her to write a book.
Her first novel, The Island, was released in 2016 about Morgan and Percy and their creation of an international storytelling app that allows people to build narratives together. Mahon takes readers all around the world, to places she’s never even been, using details she gathered from reviews on travel websites.
“I’d actually write people. I read people’s reviews, and I would just pull out really local streets and local color,” the writer said. “That book was written from other people’s imaginations. That’s the best way I can put it.”
Immediately after finishing The Island, Mahon started what would become A Night in the Vine, her second novel, bringing Morgan and Percy along for the ride. In October last year, it was published in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
While Mahon was building the narrative for A Night in the Vine, the pandemic hit. In that time the author dealt with heavy losses in her family. As she started to heal, she picked up the manuscript again with a clear direction.
“I call it a post-pandemic narrative because the book’s about, above all, human communication,” Mahon explained. “I think we’re only beginning to realize how important connections are.”
A Night in the Vine finds Morgan and Percy searching for the “Grape Whisperer” in Santa Barbara County wine country, more specifically the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail. A rainstorm strands them at a vineyard estate overnight with four strangers. They meet a French woman with a cancer diagnosis, a local widower, and an uptight New Yorker and his fiancée.
The plot is based on an experience Mahon had with some friends at the Demetria Estate winery in Los Olivos. Rather than overnight, the group was only stuck for a few hours. Without cell service, there was really only one thing to do.
“We were with these strangers, and we started talking to them. Everybody became friends,” Mahon remembered. “They threw out cheese and crackers, and it was one of the best afternoons of my life, of my wine life.”
When it was all over, Mahon knew it would make a great book, and her friends agreed.
With permission from each establishment, Mahon chose some of her most frequented wineries to use as scenes in A Night in the Vine. Readers travel with the characters to the likes of Blackjack Ranch, Andrew Murray Vineyards, and Demetria Estate. Mahon lived in Los Olivos for many years and would often bike through Ballard Canyon and down Alamo Pintado Road, stopping to sit in the quiet of the vineyards.
Mahon also likes to incorporate world literature into her books, which was a struggle with the United Kingdom publisher. The public domain laws aren’t the same as in the U.S., so Mahon needed to get permission. She spent months contacting estates—including Ray Bradbury’s, for instance—but the effort paid off in the end.
The writer said she’s committed to two more books and wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to make one of them into a movie. The setting of A Night in the Vine would make a picturesque film.
“You’ll think about wine in a different way, but it’s really a story about the Earth,” Mahon said. “The soil is the skin of the Earth. It’s a lot to think about.”
Staff Writer Madison White often has her nose buried in a book. Reach her at mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in January 22 – January 29, 2026.