Driftless

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 portaits 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. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

August 11, 2008
After a 30-year absence from publishing due to a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed, Rhodes is back with a novel featuring July Montgomery, the hero of his 1975 novel, Rock Island Line
, which movingly involves him with the fates of several characters who live in the small town of Words, Wis. Through July, we meet Olivia Brasso, an invalid who loses her family’s savings at a casino; parolee Wade Armbuster, who befriends Olivia after she is mugged; Winifred Smith, Olivia’s new pastor; Jacob Helm, a widower who finds himself falling in love with Winnie; Gail Shotwell, a local musician who has an unusual reaction when her idol offers to record one of her songs; and Gail’s brother, Grahm, and his wife, Cora, who blow the whistle on the milk cooperative that has been cheating them and other farmers. 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.