Customer Reviews

Driftless

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In the small town of Words, Wisconsin, we find a group of people with complex and intertwined lives. July Montgomery is a drifter that arrived 20 years ago and has made a place for himself among the townsfolk. Violet and Ophelia are two sisters who need each other. One cannot walk, and the other needs to be needed. Grahm and Cora Shotwell are fighting Corporate America after uncovering a milk scandal. Gloria Shotwell is chasing her dream of being a musician. Jacob Helm grieves over his dead wife. Rusty and Maxine Smith need to learn a hard lesson in tolerance. Winnie Smith, the pastor, has an unearthly experience. All of the townspeople are haunted by their pasts in one way or another. When I first picked up this book, I was struck by the beauty of it. On the dust jacket we can see the town of Words, and after reading the book and looking at the front again, you can see what each of the characters sees in the town. It's a safe haven, an alternate universe, a work place, a prison.

I found myself investing a lot of emotion into this book. Once again I was trapped inside the pages and felt angry at the end when I was forced out. You become so close to the characters that they feel not only like family, but lifelong friends as well. You can touch each person's soul and know exactly where their hearts is and what thoughts fill their heads. You want to help them, scold them, hug them, and comfort them.

I was filled with every emotion while reading this book-ranging from joy to grief. I believe it has made me a better person. I'm looking at life differently, more open-minded and compassionate.

David Rhodes also wrote The Last Fair Deal Going Down, The Easter House, and Rock Island Line in the mid-seventies. I'm thankful he has reentered into the writing world. Hopefully the publication of this book signifies that there will be more in the future.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

I originally ordered this book after reading a Wall Street Journal article about it in September. After I had read page 22 of Driftless several times (and had already reread several other pages), not because I couldn't follow it but because I liked what it was saying and how it was saying it, I decided two things: this book would make a good present for all the readers on my Christmas list and it was going to take me a long time to read it! So I ordered extra copies and kept reading. Most good books I want to read quickly to find out what happens but this book is so good that I am reading it very slowly, for the same reason we eat great food very slowly, to make the enjoyment last!

This book really draws you into the interconnected lives of people of small town America. I moved from a small city to a large metropolitan area last year and was recently trying to explain to someone why I was still missing my former home. The central reason is because I felt safe and nurtured there. Not physically safe from crime but safe because of my emotional attachment to people. Everywhere I went I saw people I knew. When you drive to the grocery store in a small town people wave at you and you wave at them. I liked feeling connected to the human beings around me. I knew about their lives and they knew about mine and we cared about each other. Sure not everyone likes each other but you still feel for them and they for you because you know the good, bad and the ugly about each others lives. You know you have value in a small community and that's what you see in Driftless.

This book is a gem. Lyrical, poetic, each chapter beautifully executed, each feeling like a self-contained short story in its own right. Rhodes is talented enough to make us care about -- and be interested in -- several characters at the same time. The characters inhabit a small town in Wisconsin. There is, arguably, one main character, July, who, in his own quiet and subtle manner, affects the lives of so many of the other inhabitants of the town. Rhodes' characters surprise us throughout the book. We make assumptions about them and realize how wrong we were. That quality, in and of itself, is what makes these characters so realistic. Rhodes beautifully reminds us of the trap we often fall in when we make incorrect assumptions about the people around us. Rhodes brings to life his fictional town as effectively as Steinbeck brought to life the communities of northern California.

As the short chapters progress in Driftless, the characters, at first seemingly moving through life unconnected to each other, come closer and closer to each other: intricate stories involve a full range of personalities who can perhaps even be found in our own communities.

Predictably complex and certainly not your typical "everything ends up okay" story, David has done a great job of covering the political, social, and religious landscape with his cast of characters. In some ways David is representing his own life through this huge variety of characters: you have the music, you have the populism, the religion, the rebellion against authority, and you have the wheelchair. He needed this huge cast of characters in Driftless to tell the story of his community and his own place in it.

Driftless is an excellent read. For another shorter piece by David Rhodes read his December 25, 2008 "Wearing Feathers" in the New York Times opinion section.

Having started my career working in corporate agribusiness, the last 25 years in social/economic justice work on behalf of family farmers, I was deeply touched by the characters and stories portrayed in Driftless.

Southwest Wisconsin, which is my home, is a unique amalgam of true "characters." Nowhere is this truer than the Driftless Region, called by some, "The Appalachia of the Midwest."

David Rhodes, in some of the most eloquent writing I've enjoyed in some time, truly connects you to the heart of his characters -- and they sure do have heart. All complicated. All wounded. Some of them having the courage to overcome their fears. Some of them having the courage to be quiet heroes. All just like us.

As with Sinclair, Hemingway and Steinbeck, Rhodes' work has a thread of social justice and humanitarianism that run through the pages of Driftless along with some downright funny, tender and highly enjoyable moments.

Just like in all of our lives it's a bittersweet and mixed bag of characters and experiences. And just like the good and bad times in our lives I felt a little bit richer and wiser after finishing the read.

Mark A. Kastel
Senior Farm Policy Analyst
The Cornucopia Institute

July Montgomery has found a home. In Mr. Rhodes' previous book, "Rock Island Line," the story ends with July leaving for parts unknown. In this book he gives a short history of July between then and now.
Mr. Rhodes is quite the writer. His stories are pretty good, with only a hint of philosophy, but a lot of life.
July ends up in Wisconsin, owning and running a farm (which for a penniless, literally, guy to do is really something else, but the farm was rundown and no good when he stepped into the scene) in the middle of nowhere, halfway to there, but not quite here either. He has become a part of the community of Words. The people of the town are wonderful, kind and caring.
The story is generally about what is happening to various folks in and around the town and a bit of their history, so you have an idea of where they are coming from. The preacher lady has a good background and is truly loving and caring, but a bit lonesome. The fix-it guy is widowed and does all the odd jobs around the town. The musician lady inherited the house in town, her brother and his family got the family farm. She is sort of strange, but comfortable in who she is and how she lives. Her brother and his wife are raising two good grade school children but get to wrangling with a big coop corporation over how the coop is running the business. The old retired farmer guy has to get his house in shape for his in-laws visit. He has to hire some Amish to help him and they do, as he helps them, as well. He also gets sentimental and and find a niece he did not know of in town. The cripple and her caretaker sister are getting by. The cripple has the best part of this whole story: she goes on a theodyssey. There are others and more simpler stories scattered throughout, but all in all, this is a story of the town and some of its people through a year. The best part is in the dead of winter, "Its too cold to snow!" boy, does that ring a bell!! Being from the area of this book's setting, I can feel very comfortable knowing all that happens could truly happen, it is familiar.

How sad for the people who skipped over parts in this book.

I read a variety of fiction, and I certainly have started books that I don't finish. I also find novels that I cannot put down, except when I need to be driving in the car. One thing about either of these choices is that the book has come from my public library. I am here because, after reading Driftless, I am going to BUY IT, for a future re-read.

Actually what I want to do when I reread this book is to highlight many inspiring remarks from a very insightful author. I want to mark it up and write in the margins.

This book is not about "fast action to keep me hooked". This is about people. People who, admittedly, may be enhanced versions, but are versions of characters I meet in daily life. I live in the region of the state of Wisconsin that is the setting for the village of Words.

Be aware that this is a weaving of rural people's lives, not an action adventure, tear-jerker or shocking who-done-it. But as a story of a community of people, it is one of the best I have read. A keeper.

More please, Mr. Rhodes.

The prose in this book is crystal clear. There are no double meanings. Author David Rhodes carefully explains everything. In his Acknowledgements he states that this book "took over ten years to complete." The book reflects this lengthy labor. It has been painstakingly crafted.

It's a fascinating menagerie of several people who live in the vicinity of Words, Wisconsin, a very small village (some forty people) in a farming region. Characters include a man who came alone to Words twenty years earlier. He reveals virtually nothing about his past. His Words experience begins with him living in a chicken coop. Through hard work he has maintained a small farm. He also has won the deep respect of neighbors who appreciate his willingness to help.

The book features a young couple with two young children who face grave peril during a horrific snowstorm, a woman pastor who really believes, a wheelchair-bound woman who is not what she seems, a tough seventy-five-year-old man who seeks the long-lost brother who helped him survive a miserable childhood, and an aspiring singer/musician.

Rhodes also turns a knowing eye on such diverse topics as dog fighting, a radical, heavily-armed local "militia," mushroom gathering, and a menacing panther that stalks the region.

Rhodes is a master at creating a mood of impending doom. I often found myself thinking that something terrible was going to happen... There is one traumatic event that I know I will never forget. And I have read several "classics" about which I remember very little.

A key theme in the book is the arduous, even dangerous, life of small-scale farmers who struggle to keep their land in the face of mighty agribusiness. Rhodes looks at a milk farmers' co-op that is controlled by corrupt managers who steal from the struggling farmers.

Basically, the only people to whom I would not recommend this book are the illiterate.

David Rhodes knows how to place words together into incredible combinations to create beautiful metaphors and other figurative language. I can't recall a book in the recent past that was of the same literary quality.

I also enjoyed the characters, but had a hard time connecting with Gail, Olivia, and Winifred at times. Although the ending pulled together the loose ends, I felt a little bit disappointed. Perhaps I wanted the book to continue, but there was no more.

The best book I have read in years! Can't wait to read Rock Island Line.