Jewelweed

February 18, 2013
There’s a benevolent sort of rural American magical realism in Rhodes’s latest ensemble novel, set in the Driftless region of southeast Wisconsin, where recently paroled Blake Bookchester returns from prison after serving over 10 years for drug trafficking. In the oddly isolated town of Words, Wis., Blake haltingly reintegrates himself into a vividly real landscape, but one that is peopled by a cast of characters too thoughtful to be believed. There’s his unacknowledged son, Ivan, a 10-year-old whose profound reasoning gives him wisdom far beyond elementary school, and Ivan’s best friend August Helm, a fifth-grader with a precocious vocabulary and a propensity for awkward exclamations too mannered for even a “gifted” child. Blake’s father, Nate, is a truck-driving epicure struggling with his connection to his just-released son and the deep romantic feelings he has harbored for a distant cousin. Other residents of the town include a pastor with a crisis of faith, a sickly teenage boy, and a turbulent but determined single mother. Words is a place where small actions unfold slowly, with Rhodes sometimes bearing down too hard to make the point that actions and words of this size and simplicity have profound redemptive qualities. Agent: Lois Wallace, Wallace Literary Agency.

May 1, 2013

At the center of this brave and inspiring new novel is Blake Bookchester, imprisoned as the story opens, though the charges against him are questionable. Aided by friends and neighbors in the small town of Words, WI--the setting of Rhodes's acclaimed 2008 novel, Driftless--the thoughtful and fundamentally decent Blake experiences a rebirth and regeneration. The novel is filled with vibrant, skillfully drawn characters whose lives will surprise readers. Winnie, the town pastor, gives up her ministry to look for better ways to pray, while the precocious young August has the wisdom of a sage. Rhodes also has important things to say about humble, hardworking Americans at odds with contemporary American culture, which he finds predatory, corporate, and soulless. VERDICT An impressive and emotionally gratifying novel; highly recommended for fans of literary fiction.--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2013
Rhodes continues the story of Words, Wisconsin, last visited in Driftless (2008), in this rhapsodic, many-faceted novel of profound dilemmas, survival, and gratitude. Happily married Reverend Winnie Helm is glad that her brainy, sensitive son, August, who has a pet bat named Milton, has finally made a friend, Ivan, the misfit son of Danielle, who struggles alone to support him. Amy, married to a wealthy contractor and running a household embracing four generations, needs help caring for her son, Kevin, who has cystic fibrosis. Nate, a truck driver with a passion for fresh, local food, worries about his son, Blake, who is finally getting out of prison. And everyone wonders about the mysterious Wild Boy. Rhodes portrays his smart, searching, kind characters with extraordinary dimension as each wrestles with what it means to be good and do good. As Winnie questions the rigidity of the church, Blake reads Spinoza, and Danielle faces her fears, neighbors come together in new configurations of understanding and giving. And all find an antidote to sorrow and pain in nature, from the teeming life of a pond to the splendor of jewelweed, a wildflower with a name that perfectly encapsulates Rhodes' vision of the glory of the ordinary in this refulgent hymn to the earth, psychic strength, hard work, integrity, and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)