After a search that made international news and resulted in submissions from dozens of established authors, Random House has selected acclaimed novelist Mark Winegardner to continue Mario Puzo's legendary Godfather saga, Random House publisher Gina Centrello announced today.


The announcement was made this morning on NBC's "Today Show," which followed the search over a period of three months. Winegardner, 41, author of the novels Crooked River Burning and The Veracruz Blues, appeared live on the program after a taped segment about the literary manhunt by reporter Jamie Gangel.


Said Winegardner: "I'm honored and thrilled to have this opportunity, and I'm going to do my best to make sure Godfather fans are equally thrilled when they read this book."


Winegardner, along with approximately three dozen other published authors, submitted a detailed proposal to Random House last November, when Random House vice president and executive editor Jonathan Karp announced that the publishing house was searching for a well-regarded novelist at mid-career who, like Mario Puzo when he began The Godfather, wanted to create an artful popular novel about crime and power in America.


"We were looking for an original writer who would bring his own vision to Mario Puzo's mythic characters, just as Francis Ford Coppola did in the films," said Karp. "After being deluged with proposals, it was immediately clear to all of us that Mark Winegardner is the one. Just as book reviewers said of Mario, he is a 22-caliber literary bigshot."


Winegardner, a resident of Tallahassee, Florida, is the director of the creative writing program at Florida State University. His first novel, The Veracruz Blues, uses baseball as a lens through which to contemplate America. "Winegardner's characters are believably white, beleivably black, believably Mexican, believably male, believably female, believably human," said National Book Award-winning novelist David Bradley. The Veracruz Blues was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1996


Winegardner's second novel, Crooked River Burning (2001), is a darkly comic love story set against forty years of social and political upheaval in Cleveland. It was called "brilliant" by The New York Times Book Review and compared to the work of John Dos Passos and E.L. Doctorow. The book also has a prominent organized-crime plot and features several real-life members of the Cleveland mob. In 2002, Winegardner published a collection of his short fiction, That's True of Everybody.


"I'm not a Sicilian, it's true," said Winegardner. "Not even Italian-American. I'm just a novelist with a vision of how to write this book. I am, however, German-Irish, just like Tom Hagen. And he did just fine in this world."


The Godfather Returns will continue the story of the Corleone family, beginning where the action in Mario Puzo's original 1969 novel ends.


Winegardner was selected by Random House; Mario Puzo's son and literary executor, Tony Puzo; and literary agent Neil Olson of Donadio & Olson, which represents the Puzo estate and controls foreign rights. Winegardner was represented by his long-time literary agent, Harriet Wasserman.


Random House hopes to publish The Godfather Returns in the fall of 2004, but those plans are tentative. "We won't publish the book until we're sure it will satisfy millions of Godfather fans," said Karp. "Besides, you don't want to rush the mafia."