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Friday, December 11, 2020

Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles

The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed combined with drought and the Dust Bowl  sent much of America into survival mode.  In West Texas, the Stoddard family struggles with frequent moves to oil field towns as Jack Stoddard  follows oil field work.  For everyone, from bankers to farmers,  the poverty and hardships created by the double calamity of economic depression and drought had to be endured.

We are all somewhat familiar with the effects of the depression and the dust bowl, but Paulette Jiles brings to life characters and situations in a personal way that gives an intensity to the struggles and the resilience of the Stoddard family throughout the decade of the 1930's.

As in News of the World, the writing is evocative and the characters memorable and compelling.  In Stormy Weather there is less of a plot and more of a feeling of memoir and endurance, and we follow Jeannine's story as the Stoddards move and move again, following the oil field until Jack Stoddard, the handsome, gambling and womanizing father dies as a result of a sour gas accident.  

Jeannine and her mother Elizabeth and her two sisters don't have the $10 for the rent and must pack up and leave.  They go back to the Tolliver house, where Elizabeth was born, which has been unoccupied for years and is shockingly run down.

The women persevere with, Jeannine often providing the motivation, even as she herself barely remembers the better times when her grandparents were alive and the place a going concern.  

For me, this was an outstanding book for several reasons.  My father was a petroleum engineer, and we lived in Texas when I was very young--so the descriptions of the oil fields of the 1930's were particularly interesting, even though they were before my father's time.  

The characters were so real--not only the Stoddard women, but their friends and neighbors.  When people manage  to meet the constant challenges of difficult times with stamina and grit, we are able to better appreciate the simple facts of running water, grocery stores with fresh fruits and vegetables, and all of the unbelievable conveniences we have today.

The dust.  The everlasting, unavoidable dust.  In the air, in the house, the worst storms literally burying vehicles.   Dust pneumonia caused by the lungs filling with dust, not fluid.  

Ordinary people in extraordinary times.

quotes:

"When her father was young, he was known to be a hand with horses.  They said he could get any wage he asked for, that he could take on any job of freighting even in the fall when the rains were heavy and the oil field pipe had to be hauled over unpaved roads, when the mud was the color of solder and cased the wheel spokes."

"It was just before the bank failures in 1933, and the rest of the nation paused, dumbfounded, in their party clothes and tinfoil hats, in Chicago and New York and Los Angeles and New Orleans, while money fell like hot ashes out the bottoms of their pockets."

"...behind every human life is an immense chain of happenstance that included the gravest concerns; murder and theft and betrayal, great love...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 an old maid on a rooftop with a telescope, spending her finest hours observing the harmonics of the planetary dance."  (these characters sometimes only occur once, but they are very present in the world Jiles creates.)

"There is no past; it is always an accordioned present consisting of compound interest accruing every second."

"Pearl, dear," he said.  "Sometimes I don't know where I am."  Mrs. Joplin stroked his back.  "It's all right James," she said.  "Wherever you are, that's the world."  (Mrs. Joplin was a favorite character, she makes only a few appearances, but she has an impact.  Her husband James is losing himself to dementia, but they, too, get on with things.)

Purchased.
Historical fiction.  2007.  Print length:  350 pages.
 

16 comments:

  1. I love the way Jiles writes. And those quotes you chose...so good! This is one I really want to read. :)

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    1. She has the ability to make things visual, doesn't she? I love her writing, too, Lark!

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  2. It's obvious you loved this one, Jenclair. It sounds like the author really puts the reader right there into the book alongside the characters. I really need to give her books a try.

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    1. I did love it and quite differently in many ways than I loved News of the World. Beautiful writing and fascinating characters in both books. :)

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  3. I live in an oil town in Texas. Almost everyone I know around here is connected to the oil industry in some way, so this sounds like a very interesting read.

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    1. :) Yes, Louisiana and Texas both have a long history with the oil fields. The wild cat well with the wooden derrick, bringing up core samples with fossils, the horse head pumping units, the sour gas, and early oil field methods were interesting. It was a part of the story, but I found it intriguing. :)

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  4. Sounds very good. Hard times, tough people good reading.

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  5. This sounds like an interesting read, Jenclair, given the history and the characterisations. I'm sure it touches the reader's heart especially those who are familiar with the history or had gone through that tough times!

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    1. It made me think about those who lived through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and just as the 1930's were ending, facing a world war.

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  6. The Dust Bowl and the Depression - tales of both of those came to me from both my grandmothers. My parents both grew up in the Panhandle of Texas right in that 'orange' region shown on the video. They were born in the 1920's and were children during the 1930's and the worst of the Dust Bowl times. It was a sad time for many, but my parents and their families remained in that area always. Both families were quite poor and hard work was a way of life. This book sounds like a good one. I'll have to note it down for a time when life isn't quite so sad. You probably know that Kristin Hannah has a new book coming out in February called The Four Winds - set in Texas of 1934. Thanks for featuring this one, Jenclair!

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    1. The book really brought hard times to life for me. I think almost everyone was poor, but those in "orange region" in the video had even more hard times than the rest of the country. The "bread basket" of the country turned into a land being swept away. The book isn't depressing for the most part, for me it was about the resilience of people. No, I didn't know about The Four Winds, but I'll be sure to check it out!

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  7. Jiles is such a brilliant writer that I want to read everything she's had published. It's really wonderful to see her finally getting from the national press the credit she deserves. I haven't read this one, but your comprehensive and enthusiastic review is going to make sure that I do read it.

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    1. Very different and longer than News of the World, but the writing is just as evocative!

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  8. You've convinced me - I need to read this book! If you're up for more Depression/Dust Bowl stories, check out Kristin Hannah's newest, THE FOUR WINDS. It hasn't come out yet, but you might be able to snag an e-ARC on NetGalley. It's a powerful book. Very evocative.

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    1. I really love Jiles' writing! I'll give The Four Winds a look. Maybe the pandemic makes the interest in other hard times more intriguing.

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