Dana Lucka grew up on a vineyard in California's Central Valley, surrounded by fig trees, Sunday lunches after Mass and the songs of Oliver Dragojević. Her grandparents on both sides left Croatia before 1930 — her father's family from the island of Hvar, her mother's from the coast north of Dubrovnik — and that dual identity now shapes her writing career.
Lucka is the author of The Perfect Series: Love, Family & Second Chances, a run of contemporary novels about a close-knit Croatian-American family navigating tradition, expectations and modern life. Her debut, Picture Perfect Love, drew on her years in San Pedro, California, home to one of the country's historic Croatian communities. The manuscript sat on her desk for roughly a decade while she built a career in university administration and healthcare education; after her father died, she came back to it and got it published. Her second book, Chasing the Perfect Spark: A Babich Family Romance, arrives on 1 December 2026 and has already picked up a five-star review from Readers' Favorite, with a third novel in development.
For travellers, the interesting part is where her story keeps returning to: Croatia itself. Lucka first visited with her family in 1989 and studied in Zagreb in 1991, before the war made travel back difficult. Once married — to a Polish husband, fittingly from another family shaped by emigration — she began returning roughly every other summer. She spent nearly ten summers in Cavtat, the small seaside town just south of Dubrovnik, and rates the island of Šolta highly for its calmer, less touristy feel compared with nearby Split.
Her food shortlist reads like a Dalmatian coast ordering guide: grilled squid with Swiss chard (a classic combo), octopus and lamb.
There's a broader point in Lucka's story, too. She argues that family stories and cultural knowledge fade unless they're actively handed down — and that Croatian-Americans remain underrepresented in contemporary fiction. For anyone with roots in Croatia or the wider Adriatic diaspora, her books offer a rare mirror; for everyone else, they're an introduction to a community that has quietly shaped places like San Pedro for over a century.
Why does this matter for a holiday reader? Because the places woven through her novels and her summers — Cavtat, Šolta, Hvar, Dubrovnik's hinterland — are exactly the kind of spots worth adding to a Croatia itinerary beyond the postcard classics. Cavtat sits a short boat or bus ride from Dubrovnik airport yet feels a world away from the old town crowds. Šolta, an hour by ferry from Split, still has fishing villages, olive groves and the unhurried rhythm Lucka clearly values. Read the books, then go see the settings for yourself.
Story reported by Croatia Week.
