This Christmas, author and former Napan Anita Clay Kornfeld is celebrating “rebirth.”

Not only is she winning a battle with cancer but two of her novels — including “Vintage” with its Napa Valley setting — have been republished.

“Having been truly very, very ill since the beginning of 2007, and having successfully defied the oncologist’s dire prognosis — at least for an indeterminable duration that I intend to last much longer than his expectations — I am again feeling so good and alive,” Kornfeld said the other day from her home in the southern California desert.

“You can imagine how excited I am to be visiting our beloved Napa Valley again, seeing so many old friends and happily signing any book for those readers who like to vicariously relive Napa Valley’s history deeply rooted on virtually every page along with the fictional, three-generational saga of ‘Vintage’ — which I dreamed would ride the times.”

Kornfeld will be signing copies of “In A Bluebird’s Eye” and “Vintage” — the best-selling novel first published by Simon & Schuster in 1980 — from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday at Copperfield’s Books, 3900 Bel Aire Plaza, Napa.

Both are Authors Guild Backin print.com editions, and can be found at nearly all online bookstores as well as from traditional booksellers.

“The economics of traditional publishing methods force tens of thousands of works out of print each year, eventually claiming many, if not most, award-winning and one-time best-selling titles,” a note in the new editions points out. “With improvements in print-on-demand technology, authors and their estates, in cooperation with the Authors Guild, are making some of the works available again to readers in quality paperback editions.”

“This Christmas holiday has a lot to do with the word ‘rebirth,’ and for me the word has a double connotation,” Kornfeld said. “Not only am I in a current — if modified — remission from my bout with B-Cell-1 aggressive lymphoma — stage four when my treatment began  — but here my two Rip Van Winkle novels have been awakened by Authors Guild in New York with their sponsorship for their Back-in-Print editions. I’m so honored and delighted.”

Upon its initial release, Publishers Weekly said of “Vintage” that “Kornfeld roots her swift, dramatic story of the Donati family in actual events affecting the history of California’s Napa Valley, from the late 1800s through the 1970s. Adam Donati, despised as a ‘dago’ by the settlers, nevertheless establishes a lush vineyard and thrives as a maker of fine wines. His love affair with Sara Reynolds, however, is brutally broken when she is dragged back East and forced to marry another; and Adam eventually weds also. Years later, when both have outlived their first spouses, Sara and Adam are married and settle with sons of both unions. Family life is rewarding until Prohibition brings bootleggers, abetted by one Donati son, preying on the vineyards, a crisis that keeps one intrigued by this high-powered saga, the generational novel at its best.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Allen Drury (“Advise and Consent”) noted at the time that “Anita Clay Kornfeld has written the definitive novel of Napa Valley and the California wine industry in her long, colorful and dramatic ‘Vintage.’ Diligently researched and compellingly presented, with a cast of characters that starts with young Adam Donati, who arrives in the valley as a wealthy young immigrant from Italy in the late 1800s, it spreads out through family members, descendants and wine industry associates for 100 years. It deserves, and will receive, a vast public reading.”

Although Kornfeld claimed at the time that the creators of the early ’80s nighttime TV soap opera, “Falcon Crest,” borrowed liberally from her novel, her attempts to sue the “Falcon Crest” team fell on deaf ears in area courts.