"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
About the Author :
As a young man, David Rhodes worked in fields, hospitals, and factories across Iowa. After receiving an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1971, he published The Last Fair Deal Going Down (Atlantic/Little Brown, 1972), The Easter House (Harper & Row, 1974), and Rock Island Line (Milkweed Editions, 2008). In 1977 a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. First published in hardcover in 2008, Driftless was David Rhodes' first novel in thirty years. He has contributed to the New York Times. Rhodes lives with his wife, Edna, in rural Wisconsin.
Review :
2010 All Iowa Reads Selection "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
