Driftless

And the Driftless farmers moved into these villages after their bodies wore out. Old men and women sat on porches in work clothes, faded by the sun and softened by innumerable washings to resemble pajamas. They talk in whispers, shelling hazel nuts into wooden bowls, telling stories, endless stories, about long ago.

The young people listened but were skeptical. It didn’t seem possible for men and women to do the things described in their stories: people didn’t act like that.

They don’t now; the old people complained.

It was impossible to explain how in those days, in earlier times, in the past, there really were giants – people who did things, good things, odd things, that others would never do. Those giants were at the heart of everything. Nothing could have been the way it was without them, but how could anyone explain them after they were gone? (pgs 4-5)

David Rhodes wrote three novels in the early 1970”s and he was seen as a very promising writer.  His The Easter House was compared to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and John Gardiner spoke of Rhodes having “one of the best eyes in recent fiction.”  After a motorcycle accident in which he was partially paralyzed, Rhodes did not publish work again until 2008 with Driftless.

Driftless takes place in a rural Wisconsin, in the small town of Words and in the novel, Rhodes explores the interior and exterior landscapes the residents of the area describing some of the happenings: “Rural images bloomed inside themes of redemption and the sadness of unfulfilled longing.” (pg. 147) The many characters include: July, a drifter turned farmer, who came into town many years ago “as a last stand – to either become in some way connected to other people or die. He could no longer stand to live as a hungry ghost.” (pg. 16); The Brassos, Violet and her invalid sister Olivia; the Shortwells, Grahm and Cora who discover their milk cooperative is scamming the dairy farmers; Grahm’s sister Gail; Winifred Smith, the Reverend of the local church; and two farmers Jacob and Rusty.

For as many characters as the book has, remarkably little happens. There is the drama surrounding the diary cooperative, a snowstorm, a couple of funerals, a trip to the dogfights, repairing a house, a visit or two from a cougar – it is a book about the ordinariness of daily life and the extraordinary nature of human connection.

I found I needed to read this book in short stretches to let what was happening percolate and this is helped by the short chapters focusing on a character or two at a time. Someone in my book group likened the experience of reading it to the act of being driftless – you find yourself floating along.  I did find some of the timing to be disconcerting – one chapter would cover a few hours of a character’s life, the next a few days, and then the third would go back to the first character, so again, you have to suspend yourself from the timeline and just go with the flow.

This book is about the hold the dead have on the living, moving beyond fear, seeing life as it really is, personal revelation, and the impact of one man on the lives of his neighbors.  It is a book you can sink your teeth into and one that sticks with you long after you finish the last page.  It took Rhodes thirty years to publish this book and I sincerely hope we don’t have to wait another thirty for his next work.

 

 

Advertisement