Driftless
David Rhodes, 2009
Milkweed Editions
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781571310682
Summary
Rhodes returns to the midwestern landscape he knows so well, offering a fascinating and entirely unsentimental portrait of a town apparently left behind by the march of time.
Home to a few hundred people yet absent from state maps, Words, Wisconsin, comes richly to life by way of an extraordinary cast of characters. Among them, a middle-aged couple guards the family farm from the mendacious schemes of their milk co-operative; a lifelong paraplegic suddenly regains the use of her legs, only to find herself crippled by fury at her sister and caretaker.
A woman of conflicting impulses and pastor of the local Friends church stumbles upon an enlightenment she never expected; a cantankerous retiree discovers a cougar living in his haymow, haunting him like a childhood memory; and, finally, a former drifter forever alters the ties that bind a community together.
At once intimate and funny, wise and generous, Driftless is an unforgettable story of contemporary life in rural America. (From the publisher.)
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