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Stormy Weather
From Paulette Jiles, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Enemy Women, comes a poignant and unforgettable story of hardship, sacrifice, and strength in a tragic time—and of a desperate dream born of an undying faith in the arrival of a better dayOil is king of East Texas during the darkest years of the Great Depression. The Stoddard girls—responsible Mayme, whip-smart tomboy Jeanine, and bookish Bea—know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks; that is, when he's not spending his meager earnings at gambling joints, race tracks, and dance halls. And in every small town in which the windblown family settles, mother Elizabeth does her level best to make each sparse, temporary house they inhabit a home.
But the fall of 1937 ushers in a year of devastating drought and dust storms, and the family's fortunes sink further than they ever anticipated when a questionable "accident" leaves Elizabeth and her girls alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times. With no choice left to them, they return to the abandoned family farm.
It is Jeanine, proud and stubborn, who single-mindedly devotes herself to rebuilding the farm and their lives. But hard work and good intentions won't make ends meet or pay the back taxes they owe on their land. In desperation, the Stoddard women place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well that eats up what little they have left . . . and on the back of late patriarch Jack's one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe. And Jeanine, the fatherless "daddy's girl," must decide if she will gamble it all . . . on love.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published May 8, 2007
624 people are currently reading
3337 people want to read
About the author
Paulette Jiles
20 books2,314 followersPaulette Kay Jiles was an American poet, memoirist and novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 524 reviews
December 22, 2024
This is a beautifully written book even if the place (Texas during the drought-plagued Depression) and surroundings (wildcat oil fields and a family’s broken down farm house) were not.
The lush language transported me to a place where I heard the sounds of wind, oil rigs, broken down trucks, town dances and lecturing traveling nurses, as if I were in the room. And the images Ms Jiles captured were as clear as the Panavision movie shorts shown before the occasional Saturday picture show watched by the Stoddard girls.
One family— three daughters and a whole lot of heartache, poverty and hopeful humanity. Making do and wanting more. Sibling rivalry and sibling solidarity. The short-comings of sometimes loving but always imperfect parents.
And the people who touch that family’s life— for better or worse. Historical fiction at its very best. The Texas dust bowl years are vividly and vibrantly brought to life on the written page.
I caught some flavoring of William Faulkner — family tragedies and bad luck, but this story is hopeful where Faulkner is usually just tragic.
I look forward to reading more of this author’s work. Sheer poetry at times.
(Reviewed 3/26/20)
The lush language transported me to a place where I heard the sounds of wind, oil rigs, broken down trucks, town dances and lecturing traveling nurses, as if I were in the room. And the images Ms Jiles captured were as clear as the Panavision movie shorts shown before the occasional Saturday picture show watched by the Stoddard girls.
One family— three daughters and a whole lot of heartache, poverty and hopeful humanity. Making do and wanting more. Sibling rivalry and sibling solidarity. The short-comings of sometimes loving but always imperfect parents.
And the people who touch that family’s life— for better or worse. Historical fiction at its very best. The Texas dust bowl years are vividly and vibrantly brought to life on the written page.
I caught some flavoring of William Faulkner — family tragedies and bad luck, but this story is hopeful where Faulkner is usually just tragic.
I look forward to reading more of this author’s work. Sheer poetry at times.
(Reviewed 3/26/20)
June 10, 2022
Paulette Jiles will win over historical fiction lovers with her realistic yet straightforward prose along with some well-developed characters that will win your heart. Stormy Weather is an ode to the struggles of the drought, dust bowl, Depression and drilling of oil in 1930’s west Texas. Jiles’ expert knowledge and research always provides a meaty and rich story with many nuggets of history and pop culture of the era sprinkled throughout.
Jeanine is the main protagonist, the favorite middle daughter of Jack Stoddard, an oil-field laborer and a dirt-track racehorse entrepreneur. As a young girl, Jeanine experiences first hand her father’s drinking, carousing and gambling. She follows him from poker games to racetracks trying to hold their family together. The family is constantly moving from town to town all over west Texas searching for oil work. The stock market crash causes desperation for families and work extremely difficult to find for those who want it. An unexpected accident on the oil rig sends Jeanine and her mother and sisters back to her mother’s abandoned birthplace where they all react to their new circumstances in a different way. Jeanine takes charge determined to learn farming and get the place back into working order. Mayme, the oldest, takes a job to help pay the farm’s back taxes and school-aged Bea loses herself in her books and writing. Their mother, Elizabeth stakes a claim in a wildcat oil well with hopes that her shares will someday pay off when the well hits oil - IF the well hits oil.
The weather plays a huge role as it never ever cooperates. The 7 year drought in Texas from 1930-1936 hugely affected crops and left people homeless. Extremely severe high winds and choking dust swept through this area killing and destroying with its strength. Rain was a pipe dream during this time. Living day to day was a struggle because farmers never knew if they would lose their crops or their livestock.
The Stoddard women come together in a beautiful tribute to love of family and hard work to persevere in extremely tough times. The sisters’ upbringing gave them the strength of will to see it through and never give up.
Jiles does this novel justice with all of the feels and charms of the era with a taste of thoughtfully chosen details that show up in the backdrop of the story - the looming WW, FDR’s New Deal, Model T’s, the Vanderbilts, Disney and Snow White, songs and Movietone news shorts that played on the family’s console radio. These extras helped to give this novel a very authentic feel.
Jeanine is the main protagonist, the favorite middle daughter of Jack Stoddard, an oil-field laborer and a dirt-track racehorse entrepreneur. As a young girl, Jeanine experiences first hand her father’s drinking, carousing and gambling. She follows him from poker games to racetracks trying to hold their family together. The family is constantly moving from town to town all over west Texas searching for oil work. The stock market crash causes desperation for families and work extremely difficult to find for those who want it. An unexpected accident on the oil rig sends Jeanine and her mother and sisters back to her mother’s abandoned birthplace where they all react to their new circumstances in a different way. Jeanine takes charge determined to learn farming and get the place back into working order. Mayme, the oldest, takes a job to help pay the farm’s back taxes and school-aged Bea loses herself in her books and writing. Their mother, Elizabeth stakes a claim in a wildcat oil well with hopes that her shares will someday pay off when the well hits oil - IF the well hits oil.
The weather plays a huge role as it never ever cooperates. The 7 year drought in Texas from 1930-1936 hugely affected crops and left people homeless. Extremely severe high winds and choking dust swept through this area killing and destroying with its strength. Rain was a pipe dream during this time. Living day to day was a struggle because farmers never knew if they would lose their crops or their livestock.
The Stoddard women come together in a beautiful tribute to love of family and hard work to persevere in extremely tough times. The sisters’ upbringing gave them the strength of will to see it through and never give up.
Jiles does this novel justice with all of the feels and charms of the era with a taste of thoughtfully chosen details that show up in the backdrop of the story - the looming WW, FDR’s New Deal, Model T’s, the Vanderbilts, Disney and Snow White, songs and Movietone news shorts that played on the family’s console radio. These extras helped to give this novel a very authentic feel.
June 4, 2022
“Jeanine you’re just always messing with me.”
“I know it.”
The weather in Texas is stormy, but not with rain. This is the world of Texas oil fields, of dust-bowl drought, of abject poverty and the wildcat oil rigs and sleek race horses that promise to buy a reprieve from it. It is the world of the Great Depression and Jeanine Stoddard is a spunky young lady, unafraid of hard work and at home in the man’s world through which her charming ne'er-do-well father drags her.
Perhaps one of the themes of this book is how important it is to be an individual and lay your own course, but also how easily you can slip into the world you dream of and, doing so, lose your way in the world that is real. Nothing impressed this upon me like the following passage, in which it is impossible not to see Jack Stoddard as someone, like all the rest of us, who simply lost his way and cannot handle the responsibility he has taken on.
He had grown up on the land that is now Camp Wolters in Central Texas, near Mineral Wells. He had grown up there when it was open country covered with the wind-worn pelt of native grasses. Once he had come upon the skull of a Comanche with a bullet hole in the cheekbone and after some exploration he had found the thighbones and ribs and tangles of buckskin fringe. During high school in Mineral Wells he had memorized Travis’ last letter from the Alamo and declaimed it at graduation. He used to ride the Mineral Wells street railway to Elmhurst Park where there was a racetrack and a casino and the wind made women’s long dresses fly up so you could see black stocking garters with the red marks they made and it moved him in inexplicable ways so that he laughed and elbowed Chigger Bates. He had seen Yellow Jacket run the 880. He shifted his feet and smoked and said we all wanted our parents to be better parents.
One of my favorite characters is Ross Everett. For me he exudes personality. He is strong and tough, but also sensitive and caring, with a quick wit and a dry sense of humor. I had an absolute idea of him in my mind, down to the tilt of his head when he dusts dirt off his stetson. The love affair here is a teasing game, and I read it knowing that I was being teased right along with the lovers.
Much of what makes this book special for me is the nostalgia it evokes for the world just before World War II, that was cruel, but in so many ways, so sweet. The strong family ties, the descriptions of the towns, the relationships that develop, and the haphazard nature of happiness, are drawn with such detail and credibility. There is the impossible nature of the Depression:
Nothing could ever be fixed, no matter how hard Jeanine tried. It all just broke again but there was no other way but to lay hands on the pieces and fit them together, make them work.
And the poignant observation of how precarious existence is:
Everything had a family to feed, it was just a matter of who ate who and devil take the hindmost.
And yet there is so much love on every page, Jack’s love for Jeanine and hers for him, the love of the girls for one another and their mother, the love that plays in and out between two of the main characters, and the simple love of the neighbors who plow the fields and lend a hand. I was caught up in it immediately and hated to reach the end and know the story was done.
Paulette Jiles is an astute and skilled storyteller. I have spent time with her in five books and I am anxious and ready to do it again. She has a penchant for penning characters that are as real as your neighbors or sisters, and choosing just the right elements from the history books and the fads of the time to make it something you live. Cultural references are everywhere, but placed within the details of the story so that there is nothing jarring or overdone in them. The times are hard, but what we know, that the characters do not, is that World War II is on the horizon and these hard times will constitute a sweet memory soon, a memory of youth and possibility before a storm of loss.
“I know it.”
The weather in Texas is stormy, but not with rain. This is the world of Texas oil fields, of dust-bowl drought, of abject poverty and the wildcat oil rigs and sleek race horses that promise to buy a reprieve from it. It is the world of the Great Depression and Jeanine Stoddard is a spunky young lady, unafraid of hard work and at home in the man’s world through which her charming ne'er-do-well father drags her.
Perhaps one of the themes of this book is how important it is to be an individual and lay your own course, but also how easily you can slip into the world you dream of and, doing so, lose your way in the world that is real. Nothing impressed this upon me like the following passage, in which it is impossible not to see Jack Stoddard as someone, like all the rest of us, who simply lost his way and cannot handle the responsibility he has taken on.
He had grown up on the land that is now Camp Wolters in Central Texas, near Mineral Wells. He had grown up there when it was open country covered with the wind-worn pelt of native grasses. Once he had come upon the skull of a Comanche with a bullet hole in the cheekbone and after some exploration he had found the thighbones and ribs and tangles of buckskin fringe. During high school in Mineral Wells he had memorized Travis’ last letter from the Alamo and declaimed it at graduation. He used to ride the Mineral Wells street railway to Elmhurst Park where there was a racetrack and a casino and the wind made women’s long dresses fly up so you could see black stocking garters with the red marks they made and it moved him in inexplicable ways so that he laughed and elbowed Chigger Bates. He had seen Yellow Jacket run the 880. He shifted his feet and smoked and said we all wanted our parents to be better parents.
One of my favorite characters is Ross Everett. For me he exudes personality. He is strong and tough, but also sensitive and caring, with a quick wit and a dry sense of humor. I had an absolute idea of him in my mind, down to the tilt of his head when he dusts dirt off his stetson. The love affair here is a teasing game, and I read it knowing that I was being teased right along with the lovers.
Much of what makes this book special for me is the nostalgia it evokes for the world just before World War II, that was cruel, but in so many ways, so sweet. The strong family ties, the descriptions of the towns, the relationships that develop, and the haphazard nature of happiness, are drawn with such detail and credibility. There is the impossible nature of the Depression:
Nothing could ever be fixed, no matter how hard Jeanine tried. It all just broke again but there was no other way but to lay hands on the pieces and fit them together, make them work.
And the poignant observation of how precarious existence is:
Everything had a family to feed, it was just a matter of who ate who and devil take the hindmost.
And yet there is so much love on every page, Jack’s love for Jeanine and hers for him, the love of the girls for one another and their mother, the love that plays in and out between two of the main characters, and the simple love of the neighbors who plow the fields and lend a hand. I was caught up in it immediately and hated to reach the end and know the story was done.
Paulette Jiles is an astute and skilled storyteller. I have spent time with her in five books and I am anxious and ready to do it again. She has a penchant for penning characters that are as real as your neighbors or sisters, and choosing just the right elements from the history books and the fads of the time to make it something you live. Cultural references are everywhere, but placed within the details of the story so that there is nothing jarring or overdone in them. The times are hard, but what we know, that the characters do not, is that World War II is on the horizon and these hard times will constitute a sweet memory soon, a memory of youth and possibility before a storm of loss.
June 11, 2022
Paulette Jiles set her second novel in 1930s Texas during the hard times of the Great Depression, a seven year drought, and terrible dust storms. Jack Stoddard, a husband and the father of three daughters, works on oil rigs and transports pipelines. Jeanine, his tomboyish favorite daughter, often accompanies Jack and is exposed to men's work. Jack is intelligent and charming, but can't stay away from horse racing, gambling, drinking, and women.
After Jack's death from an accident, Elizabeth and her three daughters are almost destitute and move back to an abandoned family farm that belonged to Elizabeth's family. The four women each have an inner strength, and they pull together to survive and to pay back taxes on the farm. Elizabeth invests in a wildcat oil well, Jeanine gets the farm running again, Mayme finds a job, and young Bea dreams of becoming a writer.
Ross, a rancher, and Milton, a newspaper reporter, add humor and interest to the story. Historical and cultural details provide a strong sense of time and place. Early movies, songs, President Roosevelt's New Deal, fashions, party line telephones, and getting the house wired for electricity give a sense of the 1930s. The author has done lots of historical research, but fits it naturally into the story. Jiles also seems very familiar with horses, creating a great stubborn race horse that readers will cheer on. Although I've read other Texas stories about ranches and dust storms, this historical novel gave a different focus by also showing the danger and excitement of drilling for oil.
There is a sense that the resilient Stoddard women will be seeing better days in the short term. But the family's radio is also bringing news from Europe about another world war. Unknown new challenges will be coming for the Stoddards and the people they love.
After Jack's death from an accident, Elizabeth and her three daughters are almost destitute and move back to an abandoned family farm that belonged to Elizabeth's family. The four women each have an inner strength, and they pull together to survive and to pay back taxes on the farm. Elizabeth invests in a wildcat oil well, Jeanine gets the farm running again, Mayme finds a job, and young Bea dreams of becoming a writer.
Ross, a rancher, and Milton, a newspaper reporter, add humor and interest to the story. Historical and cultural details provide a strong sense of time and place. Early movies, songs, President Roosevelt's New Deal, fashions, party line telephones, and getting the house wired for electricity give a sense of the 1930s. The author has done lots of historical research, but fits it naturally into the story. Jiles also seems very familiar with horses, creating a great stubborn race horse that readers will cheer on. Although I've read other Texas stories about ranches and dust storms, this historical novel gave a different focus by also showing the danger and excitement of drilling for oil.
There is a sense that the resilient Stoddard women will be seeing better days in the short term. But the family's radio is also bringing news from Europe about another world war. Unknown new challenges will be coming for the Stoddards and the people they love.
June 19, 2025
Stormy Weather sweeps through the Texas Dust Bowl, taking the reader from the Depression to advent of World War II. It finds purchase in the Stoddard family, roustabout Jack, his long-suffering wife, Elizabeth and three young daughters, Mayme, Jeanine, and Bea.
The novel doesn't have the laser precision of plot of Jiles' later works like the recent Chenneville, which I loved, and 2016's stunning News of the World. It lingers in the characters' lives, making them vehicles for vivid period details, including horse racing, oil strikes, dressmaking, dust storms, farming, country nursing, pulp fiction, roof-patching, small-town journalism, and so much more. It is slice of multilayered history given vibrant life through a multi-generational saga.
The story doesn't really get off the ground until about a third of the way in, when the Elizabeth Stoddard and her daughters make their way alone to the farm where Elizabeth was raised, now fallen into ruin. But the backstory is worth the price of admission for its breathtaking Texas backdrop, setting the stage for the ruin of the Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Another "must-read" from the skilled hands and generous imagination of one of our best writers of American historical fiction.
The novel doesn't have the laser precision of plot of Jiles' later works like the recent Chenneville, which I loved, and 2016's stunning News of the World. It lingers in the characters' lives, making them vehicles for vivid period details, including horse racing, oil strikes, dressmaking, dust storms, farming, country nursing, pulp fiction, roof-patching, small-town journalism, and so much more. It is slice of multilayered history given vibrant life through a multi-generational saga.
The story doesn't really get off the ground until about a third of the way in, when the Elizabeth Stoddard and her daughters make their way alone to the farm where Elizabeth was raised, now fallen into ruin. But the backstory is worth the price of admission for its breathtaking Texas backdrop, setting the stage for the ruin of the Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Another "must-read" from the skilled hands and generous imagination of one of our best writers of American historical fiction.
February 16, 2021
I don't want to criticize this book, really I don't! The problem for me is that it is a cute, feel-good tale of romance. Forty years ago, sure, I probably would have sopped it up.
It has humor. A pinch of history is thrown in. Details are accurate, albeit not explored in depth. It is set during the Depression and the years leading up to the Second World War. We experience the extreme drought and dust storms of Texas, discovery of oil and the exaltation that can be found in horse racing. Yet the story is so darn predictable!
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Colleen Delany. She does a good job, even if in the beginning it annoyed me that she seemed to sing the lines. I liked her male intonations; yeah, they made me smile. We are supposed to fall in love with one big, strong, handsome guy. If you want to be carried along, well then you'll eat it up. Except that there then turns up another man who sounds exactly, I mean exactly the same; this sort of destroys the dazzle of Mr. Wonderful! There is a guy that stutters. Delany's intonation for him was very good. I was dying to help him out. Those listeners who want dramatization in a book's reading will be pleased.
I cannot give this more stars. In a month I will have forgotten it, but sure if you are looking for a feel-good romance you'll probably love it.
It has humor. A pinch of history is thrown in. Details are accurate, albeit not explored in depth. It is set during the Depression and the years leading up to the Second World War. We experience the extreme drought and dust storms of Texas, discovery of oil and the exaltation that can be found in horse racing. Yet the story is so darn predictable!
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Colleen Delany. She does a good job, even if in the beginning it annoyed me that she seemed to sing the lines. I liked her male intonations; yeah, they made me smile. We are supposed to fall in love with one big, strong, handsome guy. If you want to be carried along, well then you'll eat it up. Except that there then turns up another man who sounds exactly, I mean exactly the same; this sort of destroys the dazzle of Mr. Wonderful! There is a guy that stutters. Delany's intonation for him was very good. I was dying to help him out. Those listeners who want dramatization in a book's reading will be pleased.
I cannot give this more stars. In a month I will have forgotten it, but sure if you are looking for a feel-good romance you'll probably love it.
March 9, 2012
This is the first book in a long time that I couldn't put down and day-dreamed about almost every moment that I wasn't able to read it. Author Paulette Jiles drops you into a different time and place with wonderful, precise detail that I thoroughly enjoyed. I will also be thinking about the Texas-style romance between main characters Jeanine and Ross for some time to come--it's so restrained yet filled with the kind of just-under-the-surface passion that plants deep roots into one's imagination. I'm definitely having book withdrawals from this one....
April 15, 2019
This is the story of 4 plucky women hanging together through life's difficult turns on the backdrop of the dust bowl oil fields of drought scarred Texas panhandle during the Great Depression. I liked it but it was not a particularly compelling read, I kept putting in down, yet it was also easy to pick up again a few days later.
November 13, 2021
A believable story of one family's survival of the Great Depression in Texas. The characters are captivating and ones that you can really like. The author takes us through dust storms, into hot, dusty, cotton fields, poverty, the people trying to overcome it, triumphs and tragedy, among it the awakenings of love. It’s all here in this saga. While there isn't a "plot" in the traditional sense... it's a powerful story that takes you into the era so you feel as though you are living it with the characters, and it makes us modern people very glad that we aren’t. What I appreciated most was that Jiles is dealing with the lives of ordinary people as they strive to survive and prosper in harsh conditions, always facing the threat of poverty and starvation. The book is a little slow, but overall, very good.
June 10, 2022
"They were in the midst of the Dirty Thirties, and that decade's modish obsession with important people in far places, with gangsters and movie stars and oil barons and swing bands. It was easy to feel themselves invisible and empty of significance, to forget that behind every human life is an immense chain of happenstance that includes the gravest concerns; murder and theft and betrayal, great love; lives spent in burning spiritual devotion and others in miserly denial; that despite the supposed conformity of country places there might be an oil field worker who kept a trunk of fossil fish or a man with a desperate stutter who dreamed of being a radio announcer, a dwarf with a rivet gun or and old maid on a rooftop with a telescope, spending her finest hours observing the harmonics of the planetary dance."
This passage gets to the essence of what I love about Paulette Jiles' writing. She brings history to life through ordinary people of the time, elevating their importance above the rich, famous and powerful.
"Stormy Weather" doesn't have the driving narrative or the violence that are characteristic of the 4 other Jiles novels that I've read. The slower pace could be a let down to some who have enjoyed her other novels but I loved seeing this quieter side to her. This is a book where the antagonists aren't people going after others with weapons, rather the antagonists are a collapsing financial system, unsafe working conditions, and dangerous weather conditions. These antagonists loom constantly in the background affecting the character's psyches and every aspect of their lives. Their danger is known but the menacing comes in their unpredictability of target, time and scale.
The unlikely hero of this story is Jeanine Stoddard, who's a middle child, a tomboy and a daddy's girl. Her dad, Jack Stoddard, works in oil fields and drags his wife and 3 kids from town to town chasing the dangerous work. When he's not working he's off at the horse races. He copes with this vagabond lifestyle with drinking, gambling and sexual exploits all in view of his favorite daughter, Jeanine. Jeanine takes on the role of his protector by trying to cover for him to her mother Elizabeth. Elizabeth knows her husband is in trouble but can't face it and puts the blame on Jeanine for his actions.
I felt so sorry for Jeanine and her sisters because both their parents lacked sound judgement. However, they must have done something right because they all still love each other and all of the girls exhibit pretty good judgement for their age. The oldest daughter, Mayme, gets a job to help support the family and Bea, the youngest, is an excellent student with dreams of being a writer. Jeanine is the one who holds the family together after tragedy strikes. She convinces them to move back to the old family farm rather than pay rent in rooms near town that will cost more and won't have a place for her last beloved horse, Smokey Joe.
While at the farm they have to deal with a leaky roof, broken windows, a couple of accidents, dry soil, lost love, unpaid tax bills, a menacing social worker and more. The girls face everything head on while their mother puts all her hopes in a risky oil well investment. Jeanine has the hardest job taking on the hard physical work and she never gives up. She will live among my favorite heroines with Adair Coley from Jiles' Enemy Women.
Despite all of the hardship the family faces There are some happy moments with extended family and friends including Ross Everett who was an acquaintance of their father from the races but has much better judgement than Jack. There is also Milton who is a stutter with dreams of being on the radio. And Mr. Lacey who's a good friend to Elizabeth. Then there are the animals including Albert the cat, Biggety the Rat Terrier and Smokey Joe the Quarter Horse. The animals provide some excitement and comic relief (except for a rotten "braining" incident). Mayme and Jeanine each go through a couple of love interests but the focus of this story isn't on romance, it's on family bonds and survival through hard times.
Jiles has not disappointed me yet and I can't wait to read more from her.
This passage gets to the essence of what I love about Paulette Jiles' writing. She brings history to life through ordinary people of the time, elevating their importance above the rich, famous and powerful.
"Stormy Weather" doesn't have the driving narrative or the violence that are characteristic of the 4 other Jiles novels that I've read. The slower pace could be a let down to some who have enjoyed her other novels but I loved seeing this quieter side to her. This is a book where the antagonists aren't people going after others with weapons, rather the antagonists are a collapsing financial system, unsafe working conditions, and dangerous weather conditions. These antagonists loom constantly in the background affecting the character's psyches and every aspect of their lives. Their danger is known but the menacing comes in their unpredictability of target, time and scale.
The unlikely hero of this story is Jeanine Stoddard, who's a middle child, a tomboy and a daddy's girl. Her dad, Jack Stoddard, works in oil fields and drags his wife and 3 kids from town to town chasing the dangerous work. When he's not working he's off at the horse races. He copes with this vagabond lifestyle with drinking, gambling and sexual exploits all in view of his favorite daughter, Jeanine. Jeanine takes on the role of his protector by trying to cover for him to her mother Elizabeth. Elizabeth knows her husband is in trouble but can't face it and puts the blame on Jeanine for his actions.
I felt so sorry for Jeanine and her sisters because both their parents lacked sound judgement. However, they must have done something right because they all still love each other and all of the girls exhibit pretty good judgement for their age. The oldest daughter, Mayme, gets a job to help support the family and Bea, the youngest, is an excellent student with dreams of being a writer. Jeanine is the one who holds the family together after tragedy strikes. She convinces them to move back to the old family farm rather than pay rent in rooms near town that will cost more and won't have a place for her last beloved horse, Smokey Joe.
While at the farm they have to deal with a leaky roof, broken windows, a couple of accidents, dry soil, lost love, unpaid tax bills, a menacing social worker and more. The girls face everything head on while their mother puts all her hopes in a risky oil well investment. Jeanine has the hardest job taking on the hard physical work and she never gives up. She will live among my favorite heroines with Adair Coley from Jiles' Enemy Women.
Despite all of the hardship the family faces There are some happy moments with extended family and friends including Ross Everett who was an acquaintance of their father from the races but has much better judgement than Jack. There is also Milton who is a stutter with dreams of being on the radio. And Mr. Lacey who's a good friend to Elizabeth. Then there are the animals including Albert the cat, Biggety the Rat Terrier and Smokey Joe the Quarter Horse. The animals provide some excitement and comic relief (except for a rotten "braining" incident). Mayme and Jeanine each go through a couple of love interests but the focus of this story isn't on romance, it's on family bonds and survival through hard times.
Jiles has not disappointed me yet and I can't wait to read more from her.
December 9, 2008
What a lovely, lovely book. Paulette Jiles beautifully evokes Depression-era America in Dustbowl Texas, witnessed through the lives of four women—a mother and her three wonderfully compelling daughters. As she illuminates the desperation of families struggling with poverty and deprivation, she also captures the bonds of community, friendship, and family that helped them through such terrible times. If you like historical fiction on an intimate, personal scale, a novel that transcends typical "women's fiction," you should give Stormy Weather a try.
April 28, 2022
Haha! The first book I read of Paulette Jiles was News of The World which was very good even though I couldn't stand that she did not include quotation marks. Then I read one of her earliest books, Enemy Women, good, but not great and still no quotations. Now this book. The worst of the of the three, but hey, she included quotation marks! I thought they would help. They didn't.
I guess the best compliment I could give Ms. Jiles is wow, your writing sure has improved.
It wasn't awful, but god, so slow, and rather boring. I liked the setting of Texas during the 1930s dustbowl. However, Jiles had this strange way of inserting random news facts from the period to remind me of the period. I've read other novels that have had this set-up before and I find it takes me out of the story because it feels so contrived. Also, the characters were absolutely two-dimensional at best. I had no attachment at all to the three sisters or the mother or any of the love interests.
If I had started reading Paulette Jiles with this novel, I'd never read her again.
I guess the best compliment I could give Ms. Jiles is wow, your writing sure has improved.
It wasn't awful, but god, so slow, and rather boring. I liked the setting of Texas during the 1930s dustbowl. However, Jiles had this strange way of inserting random news facts from the period to remind me of the period. I've read other novels that have had this set-up before and I find it takes me out of the story because it feels so contrived. Also, the characters were absolutely two-dimensional at best. I had no attachment at all to the three sisters or the mother or any of the love interests.
If I had started reading Paulette Jiles with this novel, I'd never read her again.
March 11, 2008
A sort of female Grapes of Wrath, this is a story of deep, unrelenting poverty and the daily struggle for survival during the depression and dustbowl years. After a nomadic lifestyle with a hard-drinking, heavy-gambling father; Jeannie, her mother and two sisters return to their deserted, run-down ancestoral Texas ranch after his death. Jeannie, at the age of 20, takes on the challenge of scraping a life from the hard-baked earth and unrelenting drought, as she tries to figure out what her own future holds.
I enjoyed the prose-style which is sparse and direct. It complimented the frugality and pragmatic nature of the times. No waste, no excess, and no need for flowery sentimentality, these were hard times and most people didn't mess around but said what they meant, worked hard, and had little. The prose let me feel rather than read about the chemistry between Ross and Jeannie, the guilt and fraility of Elizabeth (the mother), the longing of Mayme, and the drive pushing Jeannie. It was really an involving story and a fascinating peak into the lives of Americans during a very distant,unique time in the American economy...Hmm..wait a minute; global warming-hurricanes, floods, major snowstorms; the housing crisis, recessions, falling markets...maybe not so unique and distant after all. Ah, if only I had a crazy race horse and shares in a wildcat oil well!
I enjoyed the prose-style which is sparse and direct. It complimented the frugality and pragmatic nature of the times. No waste, no excess, and no need for flowery sentimentality, these were hard times and most people didn't mess around but said what they meant, worked hard, and had little. The prose let me feel rather than read about the chemistry between Ross and Jeannie, the guilt and fraility of Elizabeth (the mother), the longing of Mayme, and the drive pushing Jeannie. It was really an involving story and a fascinating peak into the lives of Americans during a very distant,unique time in the American economy...Hmm..wait a minute; global warming-hurricanes, floods, major snowstorms; the housing crisis, recessions, falling markets...maybe not so unique and distant after all. Ah, if only I had a crazy race horse and shares in a wildcat oil well!
October 8, 2019
Paulette Jiles is in a league of her own. I am quickly devouring her entire backlist, and her lyricism and plot structure never fail to entrance my mind. I read her paragraphs two or three times just to savor the language. I am afraid I am ruined for other books.
August 31, 2015
Good book. Great character development. I'm going to look into this authors other books.
October 29, 2019
“Spring rushed past them to somewhere else, some other dimension. The house was weathered to the color of burnished steel. It shut itself down every night as coals crumbled in the stove and the old well stood outside like a throat that would speak or sing from the underworld when it was dark and everyone was asleep. Every morning the windows gazed at the weather no matter if it were a spotless blue sky or great clouds that roared and tumbled overhead in fugitive waterless balloons while Jeanine’s immaculate laundry snapped on the line. Below, the Brazos drained out of the high plains and cut its way through the red earth and every month it was lower and lower until now there were only separated holes of water and it was possible the river would go dry for the first time in human memory.”
I first heard about this novel in a New York Times book review and marked it in my mind as a 'must-read'. The paperback cover quotes the Washington Post Book World as calling it "A bighearted, life-affirming novel" and I was in the mood for just such a read.
I loved reading this novel on so many levels. There is Jile's masterful use of language, as evidenced in the quoted paragraph above. Her descriptions make the Dust-Bowl Depression era in Texas brings history alive. She surprises one, like writing about pain like 'rusty metal going slowly'. I read that line while my husband was laying on a gurney, waiting for rotor cuff surgery. I was sure that was how he felt over the last two months since the injury.
Her characters are wonderfully real and true. Jeanine's gumption and drive to care for her family after the death of her beloved alcoholic and gambling handsome father elevates her to near heroic levels. The blossoming romance between Jeanine and Ross take place over "shingles and glass and tires". Jeanine is fearful of giving up her independence to rely on a man who, like her father, might fail her. Plus, Ross's first wife died of dust pneumonia and overwork, leaving a child who resists the idea of a step-mother.
The overall plot is sometimes familiar, but Jile's writing and characterization and tempo made the book compelling and engrossing. There is tragedy, but there is also bravery and determination and above all, hope.
I will read this novel again some time. And in the meantime, I intend to look for Jile's Civil War novel "Enemy Women".
I first heard about this novel in a New York Times book review and marked it in my mind as a 'must-read'. The paperback cover quotes the Washington Post Book World as calling it "A bighearted, life-affirming novel" and I was in the mood for just such a read.
I loved reading this novel on so many levels. There is Jile's masterful use of language, as evidenced in the quoted paragraph above. Her descriptions make the Dust-Bowl Depression era in Texas brings history alive. She surprises one, like writing about pain like 'rusty metal going slowly'. I read that line while my husband was laying on a gurney, waiting for rotor cuff surgery. I was sure that was how he felt over the last two months since the injury.
Her characters are wonderfully real and true. Jeanine's gumption and drive to care for her family after the death of her beloved alcoholic and gambling handsome father elevates her to near heroic levels. The blossoming romance between Jeanine and Ross take place over "shingles and glass and tires". Jeanine is fearful of giving up her independence to rely on a man who, like her father, might fail her. Plus, Ross's first wife died of dust pneumonia and overwork, leaving a child who resists the idea of a step-mother.
The overall plot is sometimes familiar, but Jile's writing and characterization and tempo made the book compelling and engrossing. There is tragedy, but there is also bravery and determination and above all, hope.
I will read this novel again some time. And in the meantime, I intend to look for Jile's Civil War novel "Enemy Women".
June 23, 2019
Excellent story and brilliant narration BT Colleen Delaney!
May 27, 2018
Jiles has become one of my favorite authors. She can describe a west Texas sandstorm so artfully that you can feel the grit in the back of your neck.
June 12, 2022
“Events come about in chains. People die without warning. Droughts settle on the country and become fixed and will not move on. Without warning, a boy starts turning into a man. Nothing you did yourself or failed to do. He stared i to the design of the fire. The wind fluted at the edges of the roof and at the windowpanes in a wandering series of tones. In the stanzas of the wind’s singing he could hear voices from a past time, and they were hard voices, for this was a hard country and they were living in hard times.”
Stormy Weather is a story about a family in the dust storms and oilfields of Texas during the Depression. The father is a gambler who drinks and carouses with women until he dies suddenly in a scandal. The mother dreams of her childhood home and an oil well coming in. She has three daughters to raise and when they run out of money, they go back to her parent’s home which was abandoned and left derelict when he parents died. The story is principally about the middle daughter, Jeanine, who takes on the task of bringing the old house and ranch back to life, while the older daughter, Mayme, dreams of marrying and the younger one, Bea, dreams of writing for magazines.
“They began to make their lives there, throughout the fall of 1937. They tried to piece their lives together the way people draw maps of remembered places; they get things wrong and out of proportion, they erase and redraw again.”
Jeanine has the grit to pull this off, and everyone pitches in with their own gifts, but there are accidents and most of all the unrelenting times of poverty, drought and dust storms.
“When her father was arrested, Bea understood that there were unknown depths to which people could fall, when all the structures of the world came loose, the framework gave way. When, like the king, you abdicated.” This understanding is a pre-figuring.
Even though the girls are angry with their father for the way he brought scandal into their lives, they are also grieving his loss.
“They all missed him and nobody would say so. The sisters needed him to drive nails and change the tires and to tell them what kind of man to look for in life, to say Don’t marry somebody like me. To explain why Roosevelt had stored all the gold in Fort Knox. But he was so irrevocably gone.”
Two men pursue Jeanine and she must figure out for herself what kind of man she wants to marry. In the end, I think she makes the right choice.
Jiles is a terrific writer, as gifted with descriptive prose as with dialog that sounds too authentic to be imagined. This may be a well known expression, because it seemed so true to the time and place, but I had never heard it used before, and it made me laugh: “She’s mad enough to eat bees.”
I give this 4.5 stars with only a bit taken off because it seemed slow to start. However, once roped in, like the ranch animals being sheared, I gave in.
Stormy Weather is a story about a family in the dust storms and oilfields of Texas during the Depression. The father is a gambler who drinks and carouses with women until he dies suddenly in a scandal. The mother dreams of her childhood home and an oil well coming in. She has three daughters to raise and when they run out of money, they go back to her parent’s home which was abandoned and left derelict when he parents died. The story is principally about the middle daughter, Jeanine, who takes on the task of bringing the old house and ranch back to life, while the older daughter, Mayme, dreams of marrying and the younger one, Bea, dreams of writing for magazines.
“They began to make their lives there, throughout the fall of 1937. They tried to piece their lives together the way people draw maps of remembered places; they get things wrong and out of proportion, they erase and redraw again.”
Jeanine has the grit to pull this off, and everyone pitches in with their own gifts, but there are accidents and most of all the unrelenting times of poverty, drought and dust storms.
“When her father was arrested, Bea understood that there were unknown depths to which people could fall, when all the structures of the world came loose, the framework gave way. When, like the king, you abdicated.” This understanding is a pre-figuring.
Even though the girls are angry with their father for the way he brought scandal into their lives, they are also grieving his loss.
“They all missed him and nobody would say so. The sisters needed him to drive nails and change the tires and to tell them what kind of man to look for in life, to say Don’t marry somebody like me. To explain why Roosevelt had stored all the gold in Fort Knox. But he was so irrevocably gone.”
Two men pursue Jeanine and she must figure out for herself what kind of man she wants to marry. In the end, I think she makes the right choice.
Jiles is a terrific writer, as gifted with descriptive prose as with dialog that sounds too authentic to be imagined. This may be a well known expression, because it seemed so true to the time and place, but I had never heard it used before, and it made me laugh: “She’s mad enough to eat bees.”
I give this 4.5 stars with only a bit taken off because it seemed slow to start. However, once roped in, like the ranch animals being sheared, I gave in.
January 21, 2018
For those who have read and liked Paulette Jiles' "News of the World," it is worth looking back at some of her earlier works, "Stormy Weather" being a good one to pick up. The action takes places during the '30s dust bowl in Texas and concerns the Stoddard family, a mother and three daughters whose stars are hitched to Jack Stoddard, a handsome gambler, drinker and womanizer, who earns his keep by transporting and installing equipment used in the burgeoning oil business.
Their struggles takes us deep into the economics of poverty and deprivation. The two oldest girls, Mayme and Jeanine, the father's favorite and main protagonist of the story, take their few dollars into the store at Strawn's crossroads and are confronted with the realities of their situation. "They now knew what was in store for them. A can of trouble, a pound of misery, yards and yards of work to shore that old place up again."
Elizabeth, their mother, is as plucky as her three daughters, as is Bea, the youngest, a would-be writer who never goes anywhere without her Big Chief. The family is working against the dust, the drought and the Depressions. In "Stormy Weather" we get to see all three firsthand. Elizabeth wonders when young women started wearing Levis around the house. Having two large gangling girls who were her daughters was one more confusing event like adultery, widowhood, and the financial collapse of the United States.
The book introduces a number of important secondary characters: Ross Everett, who at 19, already knows a good deal when he sees it and this turns out to be Jeanine. But there is also Milt Brown, the would-be radio announcer with a stutter who courts the reader while amusing Jeanine with his humorous self-deprecation.
Jiles provides us with a history lesson in detail and language, much of the vernacular is amusing as in one mother's exclamation that her daughter was "headed for the lakes of fire" with her loose talk. Or that Jeanine should be careful hiring a certain family to work her homestead: "The way they cus would make your nose bleed."
Their struggles takes us deep into the economics of poverty and deprivation. The two oldest girls, Mayme and Jeanine, the father's favorite and main protagonist of the story, take their few dollars into the store at Strawn's crossroads and are confronted with the realities of their situation. "They now knew what was in store for them. A can of trouble, a pound of misery, yards and yards of work to shore that old place up again."
Elizabeth, their mother, is as plucky as her three daughters, as is Bea, the youngest, a would-be writer who never goes anywhere without her Big Chief. The family is working against the dust, the drought and the Depressions. In "Stormy Weather" we get to see all three firsthand. Elizabeth wonders when young women started wearing Levis around the house. Having two large gangling girls who were her daughters was one more confusing event like adultery, widowhood, and the financial collapse of the United States.
The book introduces a number of important secondary characters: Ross Everett, who at 19, already knows a good deal when he sees it and this turns out to be Jeanine. But there is also Milt Brown, the would-be radio announcer with a stutter who courts the reader while amusing Jeanine with his humorous self-deprecation.
Jiles provides us with a history lesson in detail and language, much of the vernacular is amusing as in one mother's exclamation that her daughter was "headed for the lakes of fire" with her loose talk. Or that Jeanine should be careful hiring a certain family to work her homestead: "The way they cus would make your nose bleed."
July 23, 2022
Another fantastic book by Paulette Jiles! This one takes place in and around the oil fields of Texas, simultaneously during the oil boom and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. I always love the local history and local color that make Jiles' books so authentic and so interesting. For the time you are reading her books, you are not only totally immersed in the lives of the characters but learning a little more about America's history.
The main protagonists in Stormy Weather are Jack and Elizabeth Stoddard, their three daughters and a local rancher, Ross Everett. It is through them that we witness the excitement of the Texas oil boom, the hardships of living through the long drought of the Dust Bowl, and the resilience and adaptability of people just trying to survive on the land they loved. The Stoddard girls were such an inspiring example of a family working together; and the developing relationship between Jeanine Stoddard and Ross Everett was perfectly carried along.
Jiles is a brilliant author that I never tire of reading!
The main protagonists in Stormy Weather are Jack and Elizabeth Stoddard, their three daughters and a local rancher, Ross Everett. It is through them that we witness the excitement of the Texas oil boom, the hardships of living through the long drought of the Dust Bowl, and the resilience and adaptability of people just trying to survive on the land they loved. The Stoddard girls were such an inspiring example of a family working together; and the developing relationship between Jeanine Stoddard and Ross Everett was perfectly carried along.
Jiles is a brilliant author that I never tire of reading!
September 24, 2011
Stormy Weather is the follow-up novel to Paulette Jiles’ wildly popular and critically acclaimed first novel, Enemy Women. With it, she proves, without a doubt, that her writing has staying power.
Stormy Weather is the story of Jeanine Stoddard, her sisters, and their mother. Deserted and humiliated by their mercurial father and husband, Jack Stoddard, the women must negotiate the uncharted world of East and Central Texas during the Great Depression.
Jeanine, the middle-child, skinny and fierce, leads her mother and sisters out of the oil fields and back to the abandoned Tolliver farm of her mother’s childhood. There, they struggle to survive drought, dust storms, back taxes, injury, and the stigma of poverty.
But while the Great Depression and its hardships are common fodder for fiction, Jiles’ story of rough and tumble East Texas, its oil fields, its illegal horse racing, and its unforgettable characters is fresh enough.
Her prose, too, is vital, sweeping over vast distances in time and space at one moment, and honing into focus on a single scene the next. It is difficult to shake certain images in this book, such as the blind man who helps Jeanine load her drunken father into the family jalopy. Or the moment she catches her neck-scarf in the gearbox of an ancient tractor. The scene with Jeanine’s sister Bea at the well is transfixing, and the night Jeanine last speaks to her father in the family shed is also haunting.
The one problem with this novel might be the end. It cannot be said that Jeanine and her family do not undergo hardship in this story; however, I am wary of stories that end too well. They seem unlikely. And while Jiles does try to temper this fortune, it still smacks a little of Hollywood.
Nonetheless, Stormy Weather will lead you by the nose. A great read.
Stormy Weather is the story of Jeanine Stoddard, her sisters, and their mother. Deserted and humiliated by their mercurial father and husband, Jack Stoddard, the women must negotiate the uncharted world of East and Central Texas during the Great Depression.
Jeanine, the middle-child, skinny and fierce, leads her mother and sisters out of the oil fields and back to the abandoned Tolliver farm of her mother’s childhood. There, they struggle to survive drought, dust storms, back taxes, injury, and the stigma of poverty.
But while the Great Depression and its hardships are common fodder for fiction, Jiles’ story of rough and tumble East Texas, its oil fields, its illegal horse racing, and its unforgettable characters is fresh enough.
Her prose, too, is vital, sweeping over vast distances in time and space at one moment, and honing into focus on a single scene the next. It is difficult to shake certain images in this book, such as the blind man who helps Jeanine load her drunken father into the family jalopy. Or the moment she catches her neck-scarf in the gearbox of an ancient tractor. The scene with Jeanine’s sister Bea at the well is transfixing, and the night Jeanine last speaks to her father in the family shed is also haunting.
The one problem with this novel might be the end. It cannot be said that Jeanine and her family do not undergo hardship in this story; however, I am wary of stories that end too well. They seem unlikely. And while Jiles does try to temper this fortune, it still smacks a little of Hollywood.
Nonetheless, Stormy Weather will lead you by the nose. A great read.
March 17, 2020
Some reviewers have termed Paulette Jiles' writing as compact and boundless. In previous books like News of the World and The Color of Lightening, I have enjoyed how she has painted the Texas landscape of her stories. In Stormy Weather, the Stoddard family - minus the gambling, drinking, womanizing, patriarch - settle into the old Tolliver homestead and try and remake a stable life. Jeanine, the storyteller, is the family glue although this reader keeps expecting Bea to emerge as the true family memorist (and maybe she does, later). This Stormy Weather landscape is sere, as the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl extend into and engulf Texas. While the land is colorless and dry in the Stoddard world, the writing and storytelling is far from it.
I must say again I lived in San Antonio for almost 20 years, which was Paulette Jiles' neighborhood for much of her writing and publishing. If I had read her work back then, I might have bumped into her, and appreciated her more.
Now word comes that Tom Hanks will become Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd on the big screen.
I must say again I lived in San Antonio for almost 20 years, which was Paulette Jiles' neighborhood for much of her writing and publishing. If I had read her work back then, I might have bumped into her, and appreciated her more.
Now word comes that Tom Hanks will become Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd on the big screen.
June 24, 2008
Stormy Weather follows a family in Texas during the dust bowl. Paulette Jiles style is a little jarring at first, but I soon got used to it. It jumps from topic to topic mid-paragraph.
Life during that era was very difficult for a lot of people. It's hard to believe that that was only 70 years ago. Times have sure changed. We hear talk of "recession" now, and how hard life is. No way. We have it so well in America.
I couldn't decide whether the focus was supposed to be on the characters or the period. I didn't care a whole lot about the characters, but there wasn't a whole lot of background information about why the characters went through what they did. Three stars.
Life during that era was very difficult for a lot of people. It's hard to believe that that was only 70 years ago. Times have sure changed. We hear talk of "recession" now, and how hard life is. No way. We have it so well in America.
I couldn't decide whether the focus was supposed to be on the characters or the period. I didn't care a whole lot about the characters, but there wasn't a whole lot of background information about why the characters went through what they did. Three stars.
June 5, 2009
I really enjoyed this book. I can't remember exactly but one of the quotations on the back said something to the effect of, this book is a view of the past but it is NOT sepia-toned.
I loved this book because it felt so real. The desperation of the Great Depression and dust bowl out in rural texas felt so palpable. And it was because the desperation felt so real that I completely related to their fears and anxieties. Especially how once things got better, they were so scared to let go of what they had scraped together to build. I just really cared about the characters and I felt transported to that time.
I loved this book because it felt so real. The desperation of the Great Depression and dust bowl out in rural texas felt so palpable. And it was because the desperation felt so real that I completely related to their fears and anxieties. Especially how once things got better, they were so scared to let go of what they had scraped together to build. I just really cared about the characters and I felt transported to that time.
February 25, 2016
I read this during lunch at my desk at work, and it held my interest quite well considering the fragmented attention it received. I wasn't excited to read another horse racing novel, but it turned out it was not this at all. It was more of a portrait of life in dusty Texas during the Great Depression. I enjoyed Jeanine and her family's persistence in carving a life out of hard times. I am puzzled by those who called this book depressing. I don't think it was, instead the lucky strikes (in oil, horses, and love) were more luck than most people could hope for.
October 11, 2024
I think this may have been on of my favorites!
Just wrote a big long review -and it was lost by Goodreads.
Just wrote a big long review -and it was lost by Goodreads.
June 26, 2008
This is an easy read that has good characters and good writing. Paulette Jiles used to be a poet, and I thought most of the imagery and and over-all story-telling was very pretty--and I loved the dialogue. It is set in Texas during the Depression and involves a family of three sisters and their mother overcoming the odds and making a life for themselves on the old family farm. It's not an original story, but it gave me a good sense of what the Depression might have been like. I liked reading about the quarter horse match races and being a sap for love stories, I liked the romance between the main character Jeanine Stoddard and the rancher Ross Everett. Most of all, I just liked Jeanine--she was brave, determined, she loved horses, and she was good at sewing--the image of her zebra-striped flour sack dress is one of my favorites. Also, in a time when too many recently published novels are either blantantly violent and sexual or just plain weird and disturbing (and the writing much too self-important and all too aware of its own profundity) it's refreshing to read something that isn't.
August 7, 2008
An interesting take on the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and the state of rural Southern America leading up to WWII. I like the fact the author chose to focus primarily on the middle child of a family--not a typical choice. I was pleased with how she centered much of the story around female characters and their experiences as women, especially in times when women were at the mercy of men who had trouble finding jobs and of society, which expected them to stifle their ambitions and take care of their husbands, children, and homes without any real thought for themselves. A subtle feminism permeates the book--quite well handled--even if the story does end somewhat conventionally.
November 5, 2008
This book was just "okay" for me.
The fictional story takes place during the great depression. The main characters of the story is a family who moves from place to place in order to find work. The father is a drunkard who eventually dies in the book. The family then returns to Texas to the home they left earlier in the book. It talks of the hard times they endured during this period in history.
One of the reasons that the story was just "okay" is because I wasn't able to "get into" the characters. Because of the way it was written I didn't really care what happened to them. I have read other books about the great depression that were much better written.
The fictional story takes place during the great depression. The main characters of the story is a family who moves from place to place in order to find work. The father is a drunkard who eventually dies in the book. The family then returns to Texas to the home they left earlier in the book. It talks of the hard times they endured during this period in history.
One of the reasons that the story was just "okay" is because I wasn't able to "get into" the characters. Because of the way it was written I didn't really care what happened to them. I have read other books about the great depression that were much better written.
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