The Farmer's Daughter [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Jim Harrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2009

The three stories in The Farmer's Daughter are as different as they are unforgettable. Written in the voice of a home-schooled fifteen-year-old girl in rural Montana, the title novella is an uncompromising, beautiful tale of an extraordinary character whose youth intersects with unexpected brutality and of the reserves she must draw on to make herself whole. In another story, Harrison's beloved recurring character, Brown Dog, still looking for love, escapes from Canada back to the States on the tour bus of an Indian rock band called Thunderskins. And in the concluding story, a retired werewolf attempts to lead a normal life but is plagued by feverish episodes of lust, physical appetite, athletic exertions, and outbursts of violence under the full moon.

--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In three novellas as dark as they are exuberant, Harrison delivers protagonists who are smart, lusty in that classic Harrison fashion and linked by The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me, a Patsy Cline song that appears throughout and could easily serve as the characters' theme song. The first novella recounts the story of Sarah, who is dragged to rural Montana by her neglectful parents and, at age 15, is the victim of a sexual assault that provides her with an undying thirst for revenge. The collection's second and strongest novella features a recurring Harrison character, Brown Dog, a half-Indian free spirit who cares for his ailing stepdaughter who is afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome. (He also has sex a lot.) The final piece presents Samuel, who as a child traveling in Mexico contracted viruses that now cause werewolflike spells that render him a permanent stranger. Harrison (Legends of the Fall) shows he is still at the top of his game with these compressed gems. Taken together, they present another fine accomplishment in a storied career. (Jan.)
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Review

Harrison's fiction...is rooted in a deep connection with nature and infused with passion for the vast wilds of America and respect for its disenfranchised....always as exhilarating as a breath of fresh air. --National Public Radio --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1 edition (December 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802119344
• ISBN-13: 978-0802119346
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #568,058 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my top five best books of the year, December 2, 2009

By 

Richard L. Pangburn (Bardstown, KY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Farmer's Daughter (Hardcover)

This is one of Jim Harrison's most satisfying books in many years. If you intend to read it, you might want to avoid all reviews and comments and simply read it fresh. If you need more incentive to read it, then read on.

The title, THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER, resonating with the many cliched variations of the joke, is a fine choice for the interplay of masculine/feminine in these three novellas, entirely different, yet linked by more than Patsy Cline's rendition of the Roger Miller song of alienation, "The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me."

The opening sentence of the first novella nails down the sense of alienation: "She was born peculiar, or so she thought." Her favorite idol is Montgomery Clift in "The Misfits." The first variation on the-farmer's-daughter is a coming of age story.

In the second novella, Harrison's everyman/Native American Brown Dog is the middle man, existentially and humorously muddling his way across, playing his part in creation but agnostic to the meaning of it all. When he hears "Who are we that God is mindful of us?" he turns the question around and says, "Who is God that we are mindful of Him?"

Harrison's symbols resonate on theme. Gretchen tells Brown Dog that they should go for three times at creation, "three, not two." She finds the creation act "bearable" but wants to stop at three. Brown Dog has "the absurd feeling of a reverse Christmas in May" and recalls the holiday line, "The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow." He flops down on a trash bag "to make a snow angel."

The third roughly 100-page-novella in here is the more spiritual, a vampire story of altered consciousness, alienated but advancing toward love, at last remarking how wonderful it is to finally make love with someone you actually love.

The first novella opens with a line of alienation. The closing of the third novella ends with the protagonist recognizing the interconnectedness of living things, the ME of LonesoME diminishing in the evolution of the self toward empathy, a recurring point in Jim Harrison's Buddhism/naturalism worldview.

There is an epilogue to the third novella in which the protagonist encounters a dead bear and says "at least for a moment I felt as if we were cousins."

Jim Harrison's humor in here is a hoot. Somehow, I have to fit this onto my list of the top five best books of the year.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Had high hopes..., January 6, 2010

By 

John D. Blase (Colorado) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Farmer's Daughter (Hardcover)

I've read all of Harrison and the man's a genius. The East coast literati have continually overlooked him and he doesn't give a damn. Love it. I didn't believe Dalva could be topped and then along came Returning to Earth...it could be the perfect novel.

The English Major was o.k., but a little disappointing. I had high hopes that big Jim would be back in rhythm for The Farmer's Daughter, especially with the hint of another Brown Dog story. Please hear me, I've underlined plenty of words and phrases the likes that only Harrison can conceive, but I believe this one fell short. As another reviewer hinted, Legends set the bar for me on novellas and this one just came under the bar. As Jim as written, life is like that sometimes. I'll still buy the next Harrison, even if its full of empty pages we're supposed to draw bears and women and rattlesnakes on.

His poetry lately is excellent...maybe that's where he's finding grace in these later years, with his first love - poetry.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Confidence and Gravitas, January 13, 2010

By 

Cary B. Barad (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Farmer's Daughter (Hardcover)

Superior writing and dramatic narrative with strains of empathy and subtle humor rarely seen in modern fiction. This author writes with confidence and gravitas. A real contribution that should please a wide range of readers--from the mainstream to those looking for something a bit different. Highly recommended. I was so impressed that I plan to look into some of Harrison's earlier work.