Driftless

Reviews

“A series of portraits that resemble Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology in their vividness and in the cumulative picture they create of village life. Each of these stories glimmers.”

“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areas of the Midwest…The writing in Driftless is beautiful and surprising throughout…It’s this poetic pointillism that originally made Rhodes famous.”

“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.”

“In the Driftless region of Wisconsin, the rural town of Words is no longer on any map, but twenty-first-century concerns still manage to intrude. Lloyd James delivers a low-key yet deeply engrossing performance as the lives of the people are indelibly etched into our consciousnesses. James presents farmer Rusty Smith as a curmudgeon who eventually bites the bullet and hires local Amish carpenters. The portraits of James’s women characters are well done, especially those of new minister Winifred Smith’s and sisters Olivia and Violet Brasso. As Graham and Cora Shotwell, the couple caught in a Kafka-esque web for trying to expose a corrupt milk co-op, James is appropriately angry and perplexed. The pace is slow, the rhythms are easy, and James is top-notch.”

“In vividly realized scenes involving family secrets, legal battles, gambling, and miracle cures, Rhodes illuminates the wisdom acquired through hard work, the ancient covenant of farming, and the balm of kindness. Encompassing and incisive, comedic and profound, Driftless is a radiant novel of community and courage.”

“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.”

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