I purchased this book at The Dollar store. Even though it was a First Edition, I had originally passed it up because it had a remainder mark on it. But in returning something to the dollar store I picked it up because they don't give refunds. However, you can choose something else. So I went back to the book section and despite its remainder mark I went ahead and got it as there were no other books - nor was there anything else I was interested in at the dollar store.I am really glad I ended up with this book because the characters are very strong women. Women surviving by themselves not only through the Great Depression, but also through a time in Texas' history when there was 8 years of drought and horrifying dust storms that killed people, towns, and devastated any crops that the farmers may have been desperately trying to grow.The core group of women are Elizabeth, Mayme, Jeanine and Bea. Elizabeth is the Mother and while she is the flakiest of the bunch, she does her part by giving her daughters love and understanding. Mayme is the financial provider. She finds a job and brings home the paycheck. It is her that they all rely on to pay the mortgage and the back taxes on the home that they live in.Bea is the youngest daughter and while she doesn't really help in anyway towards the family income, she attends school, reads and writes stories. Throughout the book she has a strong presence and even gets one of her stories published.The book truly revolves around Jeanine. It is Jeanine that holds the family together. She cooks for them, cleans and sews for other people to bring in a little extra money. She runs the farm and even tries her hand at horse-racing. It is her inviolable strength and her compassionate heart that carries the farm and this book. There is only one problem that I find with this book and it is that everybody in the book gets their heart's desire in the end. To me, that is not reality. However, I still really enjoyed the book and because I read so many other books that don't end well, for this one, I'll give it a pass.Don't worry. There are other, numerous and quite interesting details I haven't talking about that happen during this story. I haven't ruined the plot line in any way by telling you what I just did.
This book certainly brings the hard times of the great depression in to vivid life. It also tells the tale of a family moved, literallly, by a man who follows the oil, follows horse racing and gambles his earnings away. When he died, the family is forced back to their family home in the midst of the depression and find a home that's been unoccupied and is run down and barely safe to live in. Jeanine spends her time initially with her father, following the gambling and the horses, driving home when he's passed out drunk and generally being more like the son he didn't have. Later she's the one who holds the family farm together. Finally the oil well mother invested in comes in and life begins to look a bit better. What a stark description of the struggles of the working poor in the great depression in Texas. There were parts, I admit that I sped read because there was just too much description. Mostly a good book though.
Do You like book Stormy Weather (2007)?
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 that most people could hope for.
—Alisa
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.
—Ashley
After the death of their worthless father, Jeanine and her sisters and mother move back to their abandoned Texas family homestead and struggle to bring it back to life. It's hard work, and they have no money, but after living the nomadic life of oil fielders all their lives, they want to make something their own.I really enjoyed this. Jiles is a poet, and it shows in her short, evocative sentences and near total lack of dialogue. It's not at all sentimental. In fact, at times, this book reads like a history lesson about the Great Depression told through the story of one family. That was fine with me, though.
—Hayden
