Customer Reviews

Thirsty: A Novel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thirsty follows the life of Klara Bozic as she immigrates to a small town, Thirsty, from her home in Croatia. The story evolves over 40 years of her life. She meets her husband, Drago, and he seems like the dream of every young girl - until they get to America. Once there, he becomes abusive toward Klara and the façade crumbles. As the cycle begins to repeat for her daughter, Sky, Klara knows that something has to be done.

This book spans the time period from 1883 to 1919. The steel boom is underway and it was fascinating to learn about how these small towns thrived around the factories. The people that lived there were completely ruled by the factory. One of the things that was very interesting to me was the death whistle. This whistle went off every time that someone was killed in the factory - and all of the women in town would walk down to the factory to learn who it was. How sad! This book was so well researched - right down to all of the little details.

I immediately was drawn into Klara's life - her story was the story of many immigrant women who came to the United States. Domestic abuse was common and many dreamed of finding something better. I loved how O'Keeffe followed Klara as she evolved from a naïve young girl, moved into a broken, shell of herself, and then became empowered by the desire to break the cycle. O'Keeffe created a foil character for her in her neighbor Katherine. Katherine was an immigrant woman too but her husband was a perfect husband. He would even run over to break up fights at the Bozic household.

This book was immediately absorbing and I didn't want it to end. I loved that this book really made me feel much closer to my family heritage - which is a new feeling for me because I never really put much thought into it before.

This book was received from the publisher in exchange for a review and this was also posted on my blog.

At first, I was apprehensive about reading the novel when its description references abuse, a steel town, a depressing place, heartbreak. Yet, I found myself absorbed in Thirsty, which tells a lyrical story about the unbendable spirit of Klara, an immigrant from Croatia.

The story begins in 1883 in Croatia where Klara contends with an abusive father. Her eventual and equally abusive husband, Drago, enters the picture as a likable guy who romances her the old-fashioned way. However, soon after arriving in the dark town of Thirsty -- a town outside of Pittsburgh -- Drago changes and it's not good.

Klara feels let down as she thought America was supposed to be colorful, full of meadows and an uplifting kind of place. Her depressing beginnings of her life in America compel you to keep reading when you meet the locals: her best friend and husband, the town drunk and a black man who owns a store.

She has three children during the Thirsty's 40-year journey of her life. O'Keeffe's writing arouses the reader's curiosity. The story never turns into a predictable one. O'Keeffe doesn't dwell on Klara's abuse. Instead she touches it -- just enough to give you an idea of what she lives with -- without wallowing in it.

It's Klara's relationships with the town's people that add color in her dark world. Her neighbor, Katherine doesn't put up with Klara's abusive husband. You can't help but cheer for her and like the gal. Drago's dislike of blacks scares Klara into staying away from BenJo, the shopkeeper whom Klara befriends despite her husband's warnings. Klara has strange encounters with Old Man Rupert, the drunk.

Katherine tells captivating stories to Klara, one of which explains how "amen" came to be. This 200-paged novel packs a lot of emotions, events, discoveries, sadness, hardship and growth to keep you intrigued while learning about the times, the working-class, the mills and the traditions.

O'Keeffe tells the enthralling story with amazing eloquence. She takes a reader on a journey of good and bad surprises worth discovering that ends on a fulfilling note without an ounce of predictability.

Thirsty is the name of the grim Pennsylvania steel town where Klara Bozic was brought as a teenage bride by her husband Drago at the turn of the twentieth century. The novel covers 40 years of her life in that town. Klara's experiences include physical abuse by her husband, unremitting hard work, and tragedy. Yet they also include hope, friendship, resilience, and grace.

THIRSTY deals with cruel circumstances, but it is not a downer. Kristin Bair O'Keefe has written a large-spirited novel with memorable characters and many scenes that linger in the mind. The prose is finely crafted, but not at the expense of story. This one is a find.

It is 1883, and all of Klara Bozic's dreams are shattered when she arrives in Thirsty, a small steel town just outside Pittsburgh. Klara though that she was escaping from abuse when she left her father in Croatia to emigrate with her husband to America. Instead, she finds that her husband Drago is just as abusive.

This novel covers over 40 years of Klara's life: the hopelessness of familial cycles of poverty and abuse, and of learned patterns of behaviour. To break this cycle takes a particular set of circumstances and strengths, and some very special friends.

In many ways this is a bleak novel. Klara's daughter, Sky, has her own challenges and demons largely as a consequence of growing up in a violent home. In turn, Sky enters into an abusive marriage and it is this which ultimately leads to Klara finding the strength to move on.

There are some bleak moments in this novel: violence and death walk together in Klara's life. There are also some wonderful moments: a visit by butterflies; various friendships that Klara forms and at the end the promise of a better life. And, perhaps, that is Klara's real migration experience: the opportunity to leave the world of abuse and start afresh.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Kristin Bair O'Keeffe's first novel, Thirsty, is a deeply satisfying read and a lesson in craft for writers. O'Keeffe's writing is gorgeous, and stunning, with every word worth savoring. There isn't a false note in the book. Equally interesting is what O'Keeffe chooses to leave out. Her beautiful prose, and the decisions she made about what to put into the book and what to leave out, gnaw at the reader and draw us into the belching, spewing town of Thirsty when steel mills ruled.

O'Keeffe introduces us to Klara, Drago, Katherine, Jake, Sky, BenJo, Old Man Rupert, and all the inhabitants of Thirsty, and gives us well rounded characters who we root for, who we love, and some of whom we hate. All the characters are believable--we believe in them and in the story O'Keeffe is telling.

And then, there are the butterflies. This one scene with the butterflies, their effect on the town, and in particular, Klara, would have been enough to justify giving Thirsty a five star review. The butterflies, in addition to the story O'Keeffe weaves, and her pitch perfect, poetic writing, will fulfill any reader and have them waiting impatiently for Kristin Bair O'Keeffe's second offering.

"In the beginning, Drago smelled of dirt and bloom, the odor that would rise if you peeled the earth back at its seams. When he appeared on the doorstep of her father's farmhouse in Croatia on the first anniversary of her mother's death, Klara was sixteen and grateful that the mourning period for her mother had finally ended. At sunrise that very day, for the first time in a year, she had put on the pale green skirt that lit her eyes instead of the black one that highlighted only her grief."

Debut novel Thirsty, by Kristin Bair O'Keeffe, opens with these powerful sentences and continues to deliver through the final word. Thirsty, the turn-of-the-century gritty Pennsylvania steel town where the story takes place, is as much of a character as protagonist Klara Bozic. Husband Drago and best friend Katherine, along with other finely developed supporting characters--the Button Man, Benjo, and Old Man Rupert, add to this intelligent, poignant and well-written novel.

Thirsty follows Klara through forty years of cruel circumstances as she leaves her abusive father in Croatia to marry and live in America with an abusive husband. The cycle continues when Sky, Klara's daughter, marries an abusive man. Klara's story is one of hope, resilience and grace. The arrival of angelic butterflies in the dreary town is just one unlikely event that helps to sustain Klara's spirit as she struggles to find a way to break the cycle of domestic abuse.

Bair O'Keeffe doesn't turn away from the pain or oppression, but addresses it head on with grace, and honesty. Her writing is deep, powerful and vivid. Although the story revolves around domestic abuse, it is not a downer, but a story of hope, survival and peace. A must read.

by Judy Miller
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

There is something truly magical about this tale that surely runs parallel to so many lives of immigrants to America, full of misery, disappointments, death and despair, and yet the hugely talented Kristen Bair O'Keefe makes it beautiful. The imagery she creates with the written word is as tangible as a work of art, and it is this beauty that stays close with you long after you turn the last page. A book you'll remember.

About Thirsty: The setting is the late 1800's. Klara is a young Croatian woman whom meets her would be husband on the front door step or her father's home. At once the two are linked. A chemistry of sorts, which is much deeper than it seems.

Driven by their intense attraction, and as a way to leave her abusive father's home and the care of her many sisters and brothers (her mother is dead), Klara returns to America with her new husband to a town called Thirsty.

Thirsty is your typical factory centered town of the period. It is a place rife with racism, extreme social class distinctions, as well as smoke and greasy ash from the local foundry. This factory is the city's economic engine providing a glimpse into the era; a time when hungry workers were essentially treated as a commodity and where their lives were as expendable as animals and very often lost.

As the story progresses we see Klara's perspective, feel her strength, and hear her voice through her complex emotions as her life continues. As she becomes settled into the community and her life stumbles on, she realizes more and more, that her husband is very much like her father.

My Thoughts: This historical fiction is at once heartbreaking yet lyrical. It looks at a person's beliefs and patterns which are exchanged from generation to generation. In this case it is based on domestic violence and from my understanding is called "the cycle of abuse". It is exemplified by the main character who watches as her mother is beaten by her father, and she in turn, by default chooses a man who is also of this nature. So this cycle continues - sadly passing onto her daughter as well.

I enjoyed this little book. It is descriptive of this time and has a touch of the magical; several spectacular natural events, one of which is pictured on the cover (butterflies being my favorite). The author also has a sweet and easy to read writing style almost like poetry.

However, being a mostly secular person, I did have a tough time dealing with a complete page detailing "God's Will", where every other phrase contains the words "God's Will". I see where this may appeal to those whom are passionate about their faith. My biggest problem with this, however, is that an abused women cannot wait on the "Will of God" to intervene. Those whom are being abused need to take the steps necessary to walk away from their abusers.

It is my hope that this is what the author intended, as a jumping place for a discussion around this scary and life threatening issue. To facilitate women into taking the life saving steps that are needed, beyond their religious beliefs. Other than my above concerns, I enjoyed this book. I give it 3 stars.

It is also important to note that the book contains graphic violence and that there is also strong sexual scenes running through its pages.

Fleeing a life of domestic abuse in Croatia in pursuit of a sanguine existence in America, Klara Bozic ends up instead in the hellhole of a Pittsburgh steel town and endures the double afflictions of the area's ugliness and her husband's cruelty. In spite of the locale, however, this is a story not of steelworkers, but of their wives and their daughters and the random characters who live off the gristle of the land.

Several scenes in "Thirsty" will stick with the reader long after the book is closed: a birth induced by gunfire in a pumpkin patch; Klara's sneaking into the blacks-only balcony of the theater; the whistle that calls the women of the town to the mill's gates in an eerily ritual death march to find out whose husband has been killed--easily the novel's most majestic and heartbreaking scene. The novel's other strength--and it is considerable--is the portrayals of several main characters, particularly of Klara, of her wayward daughter Sky, of their neighbor Katherine (who assumes the no-nonsense, tough-talking Kathy Bates role in the novel), and of the black storeowner BenJo. Perhaps the finest characterization of them all is that of the mill's manager John, whose unenviable duty it is to inform wives newly widowed by mill fatalities. Also on the plus side are a few hints of what might be considered the novel's magic realism: the blue butterflies that descend on the town at opportune moments; an episode of hiccups that won't stop; the talking parrot given to Klara to help her regain her own voice after a tragedy; the ornery old drunk whose unexpected (and inexplicable) kindness is as random and likely as winning a lottery--and who supplies the novel with an ending that is more wishful thinking than historical realism.

While O'Keeffe has researched and described the lives of women in the steel town quite well, there are a few strangely blank episodes. The Atlantic passage, for example, nearly always a harrowing and grimy (and even lethal) experience for American immigrants in the late nineteenth-century, merits a mere paragraph that describes the voyage as little more than an erotic honeymoon for the destitute newlyweds. (Only later in the book does O'Keeffe refer obliquely to a little seasickness, which still makes this one of the easiest crossings in all literature.) And, like the women who gather outside the fence when the death whistle blows, readers are allowed inside the mill itself only when a gruesome accident occurs; the steelworkers themselves remain unknown and unknowable. Katherine's wife Jake is an unfailing angel, Drago is a capricious devil, and other than their inclination to spend evenings in taverns, that's really all we know of the workers' lives.

The realism of these immigrants' stories recalls at times the novels of Ursula Hegi, and the phantasmagoria found in everyday life echoes the fiction of Alice Hoffman--and it's a strange but effective brew. In all, "Thirsty" is an uneven but moving debut novel; a series of memorable sketches and portraits that never completely congeals into a cohesive or entirely credible narrative.

I could not put Thirsty down. O'Keeffe takes some very difficult and ugly subjects and poetically keeps the reader engaged. In addition to domestic violence, she also deals with sexism and racism in the North at the turn of the century in US history. Like the flight of a butterfly, the story dips and rises and you feel transported to the town and times. But what I loved the most, were images O'Keeffe paints stringing concepts and words together in new and beautiful ways. Very impressive.