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David Rhodes

Driftless Paperback – Illustrated, May 5, 2009

by David Rhodes (Author)

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“A fast-moving story about small town life with characters that seem to have walked off the pages of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology.”—The Wall Street Journal

The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years, David Rhodes offers a vivid and unforgettable look at life in small-town America.

“[Rhodes’s] finest work yet . . . Driftless is the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years.”—Chicago Tribune

“Set in a rural Wisconsin town, the book presents a series of portraits that resemble Edgar Lee Masters’s ‘Spoon River Anthology’ in their vividness and in the cumulative picture they create of village life.”—The New Yorker

“Encompassing and incisive, comedic and profound, Driftless is a radiant novel of community and courage.”—Booklist (starred review)

“A welcome antidote to overheated urban fiction . . . A quiet novel of depth and simplicity.”—Kirkus Reviews

“It takes a while for all these stories to kick in, but once they do, Rhodes shows he still knows how to keep readers riveted. Add a blizzard, a marauding cougar and some rabble-rousing militiamen, and the result is a novel that is as affecting as it is pleasantly overstuffed.”—Publishers Weekly

Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Milkweed Editions
Publication date

May 5, 2009
Dimensions

5.4 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

1571310681
ISBN-13

978-1571310682
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Accolades for Driftless:
Outstanding Achievement Award, Wisconsin Library Association’s Literary Award Committee
California Literary Review Best Book
Booklist starred review and Editor’s Choice
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award
All Iowa Reads selection, State Library of Iowa’s Center for the Book
Midwestern Independent Booksellers Association (MIBA) Honor Award
Christian Science Monitor top ten books of the year

“Now, after what had to have been years of effort beyond the usual struggle of trying to make a good novel, we get [Rhodes’s] fourth, and, I have to shout it out, finest book yet. Driftless is the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years.”
—Chicago Tribune

“A profound and enduring paean to rural America. Radiant in its prose and deep in its quiet understanding of human needs.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Driftless is a fast-moving story about small town life with characters that seem to have walked off the pages of Edgar Lee Masters’s ‘Spoon River Anthology.’”
—Wall Street Journal

“Comprised of a large number of short chapters, the novel opens with a prologue reminiscent of Steinbeck’s beautiful tribute to the Salinas Valley in the opening of East of Eden, with a little touch of Michener’s prologue to his novel Hawaii. The book moves at a stately pace as it offers deep philosophy and meditative asides about life in Words, Wisconsin, in the Driftless zone, which is to say, about life on earth.”
—NPR, “All Things Considered”

“Few books have the power to transport the way Driftless does, and it’s Rhodes’ eye for detail that we have to thank for it.”
—Time Out Chicago

“A wry and generous book. Driftless shares a rhythm with the farming community it documents, and its reflective pace is well-suited to characters who are far more comfortable with hard work than words.”
—Christian Science Monitor, Best Novels of 2008

“A symphonic paean to the stillness that can be found in certain areas of the Midwest, The writing in Driftless is beautiful and surprising throughout, [and] it’s this poetic pointillism that originally made Rhodes famous.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“[Driftless] presents a series of portraits that resemble Edgar Lee Masters’s 'Spoon River Anthology' in their vividness and in the cumulative picture they create of village life. Each of these stories glimmers.”
—New Yorker

“Rhodes consciously avoids drama to deliver a portrait of a real rural America as singular, beautiful and foreign as anywhere else.”
—Philadelphia City Paper

“Rhodes shows he still knows how to keep readers riveted. As affecting as it is pleasantly overstuffed.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Encompassing and incisive, comedic and profound, Driftless is a radiant novel of community and courage.”
—Booklist, 2008 Editor’s Choice, starred review

“Though Driftless is a deeply contemporary tale—what it has to say about the way corporations treat small farmers is, for example, quite pressing—it also has the architectural complexity of the great 19th-century novels, but without the gimcrackery too often required to hold their stories together. It partakes as much of the moral universe of Magnolia as of Middlemarch. And it earns comparison to both.”
—Books & Culture

“Unique, funny, absorbing, at times frightening. A novel crafted by a real writer.”
—California Literary Review, Best Books of 2008

About the Author

David Rhodes grew up near Des Moines and graduated from Marlboro College in Vermont. After receiving an MFA in Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1971, he published three novels in rapid succession to acclaim: The Last Fair Deal Going Down, The Easter House, and Rock Island Line. Thirty years later, Milkweed reissued these and published his newest novel, Driftless . He currently lives with his wife Edna in Wisconsin, and his next book, Jewelweed will be published in May 2013.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Milkweed Editions (May 5, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1571310681
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1571310682
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.4 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #431,678 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,587 in Small Town & Rural Fiction (Books)
- #5,412 in Short Stories Anthologies
- #11,794 in Family Life Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
690 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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Woodtick Rick

Beautiful Midwest Novel

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2022

Outstanding read

FROM A WISCONSIN VILLAGE AND FARMS

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

Another great read from the mid west. I have been reading much of their literature, it is quite well done and interesting. And it is quite evident how much David Rhodes loves his place in the world, the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. He knows much about the natural world. The Driftless Area was overlooked by the glaciers so this small part of the mid western states is different than the rest of this particular part of the nation, the middle of the west.

The main character is July Montgomery who drifted into the small village of Words twenty years ago. Words is surrounded by farmland and is about twenty three miles from a good size city. July is a loner, his former life unknown, but his character ties the other characters together. He owns a farm, loves being a farmer, this is the only life for July. The others respect him and ask his opinion about different matters going on in their lives.

Two sisters, Violet and Olivia are as different as day and night. Violet is a caretaker, she needs being needed, she has taken care of others, outlived two husbands, no kids. Now she is Olivia's caretaker. Olivia is frail, in a wheelchair, looks much younger than her age. There is a great difference in the ages of the sisters. Violet is old enough to be Olivia's mother.

There are a few quirky characters in this book as there is in real life. Readers meet a militia group and a group of Amish among the many characters. The chapters are short and drift from a family group to a lone character, back and forth among the characters, but not hard to keep up with.

Jacob Helm has been widowed for five years. He grieves, he cannot get over his wife's death. Rusty Smith is badly needed work done on his house. His wife's relatives are coming for a visit. He is prejudiced against the Amish. July recommends this group so Rusty hires them. They do a good job. Gail Shotwell is none too fond of wearing clothes. She wears as little as she can when in her home embarrassing folks who come unannounced. Gail wants to get into music, is attractive, has a good voice, writes music, works a job, and plays and sings in a low class bar. Winifred Smith is a reverend and a pastor in the small and only church in Words. She feels being a pastor is the only way for her, but many times she feels she is not the one for religious life.

Grahm and Cora Shotwell have problems. Cora is a whistle blower. Cora, an accountant for the American Milk Corporation, finds her company is using adulterated milk, shorting the public, manipulating reports. Cora lets state government know. She is found out, loses her job, complaints are made about her family's dairy. This family is in trouble for Cora speaking out.

Characters make serious mistakes. Two children, sent home from school during a bad Wisconsin winter day, decide to play out in the snow and become lost in a blizzard. A very naive young woman wanting to make needed money, takes family funds, personal funds adding up to forty thousand dollars goes to a casino and loses every penny. There is this beautiful, black wildcat living in Rusty's barn making characters afraid.

The book is good, different philosophies about life from characters. This book won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize of 2008. This is how I heard about this book and decided to read it. The book cover is beautiful, bright orange and yellow, the colors of a hot summer noon or of the morning sun rising in the east to awaken the earth.

6 people found this helpful

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Mema121204

Exceptional

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2022

Verified Purchase

This book touched me at so many levels. I grew up in this world. These characters are fictional but not all of them. They could have been my neighbors and friends as I too grew up in the same area that David Rhodes grew up in. He brought to life these characters in a way that was a joy to read. I hope he is able to write more. The fact too that he went to College at the Prestigious University of Iowa with the best writing Department in the country. I stumbled on this book and this author and I Thank God I did. Must Read!

Helpful

SusanRez

Unique story with wonderful characters

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2022

Verified Purchase

David Rhodes captured the beauty of every day flawed people in this story. I feel as if each of the characters will be a part of me forever.

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

I read Winesburg, Ohio so long ago I can't remember anything about it except that it was a hybrid, a cross between a collection of short stories and a novel. The traditional novel has a hero or heroine, Huck Finn or Jane Eyre, for instance. In Winesburg, the reader has a window on a whole community. That's the case in David Rhodes' novel. The story starts with July Montgomery's return to Words, a town in an area of Wisconsin known as Driftless. Grahm Shotwell is a farmer barely hanging onto the land his family has owned for generations. His wife Cora is an assistant bookkeeper at a dairy co-op where she discovers that her employers are stealing. The beautiful and sensuous Gail Shotwell plays a bass guitar for a local band and works, unhappily, for a plastics factory. Pastor Winifred Smith serves her parishioners but dreams of having a child. Viola Brasso looks after her wheelchair-bound sister Olivia, and Olivia chafes at her imprisonment in her own body. Jacob Helm fixes machines and still grieves for his dead wife. There are other characters, and one thing Rhodes does really well in this novel is connect them all. The plot of this book is a little like that of a modern t.v. series that introduces multiple characters and multiple storylines over weeks of watching. All this is just the "mechanics" of novel writing, however. What I really like is Rhodes' characters. They are fully human, flawed yes, but wonderful too, just trying to make it through life like all the rest of us in the best way they can. Rhodes has some "word magic" for sure. I'm not religious in the traditional sense. I don't believe in a biblical, Old Testament God. I don't go to church. Nevertheless, I was captivated by Rhodes' description of Pastor Winifred Smith's encounter with God, with the life force all around us. It might sound like an LSD trip to some, but it's beautiful in any case: "She held this feeling for a moment and then realized something very uncommon was happening. The grasses in the ditch appeared to be glowing. The red, cone-shaped sumac tops burned like incandescent lamps in a bluish light unlike any she had ever seen yet instinctively recognized.... She looked at her hands and they seemed to be lit from inside, her fingers almost transparent. The light glowing within the grasses and the sumac glowed within her, within everything. They sang with her through the light, jubilantly, compassionately, timelessly connecting to her past, present, and future. Boundaries did not exist. Where she left off and something else began could not be established. Everything breathed." If Winifred encounters the sacred, other characters experience the profane--as when Wade Armbuster takes Olivia to a dogfight--but whatever Rhode's characters are doing, it's interesting. If you like this kind of story, a story that doesn't focus on a "main" character but on the interwoven lives of a group of characters, you might also enjoy Shelagh Shapiro's Shape of the Sky which takes place in small town in northern Vermont. Enjoy!

19 people found this helpful

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Jeanne Dobbs

Where's the Ending?

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

It was a great story and I loved how the stories of all the characters lives were interwoven. The message of life and hope and change while things stay the same while we all are connected. The problem is it left me hanging. What happened? Is their a sequel? Just didn't feel completed.

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2022

Verified Purchase

Wow. I wish I had the gift of a writer, as most people that love to read must wish. This book touched me to soul in so many ways. Maybe because the stars seem to have been aligning in my life as of late. The good Lord put things in our path in the right timing. I believe this to be the case. Thank you for the inspiring notions and deep thoughtfulness of this book.

Helpful