From Paulette Jiles comes a poignant and unforgettable story of hardship, sacrifice, and strength in a tragic time-and a desperate dream born of an undying faith in the arrival of a better day.
Oil is king of East Texas during the darkest years of the Great Depression. The Stoddard girls know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks. And in every small town, mother Elizabeth does her level best to make each sparse, temporary house they inhabit a home.
But the fall of 1937 ushers in a year of devastating drought and dust storms, and the family's fortunes sink further when a questionable "accident" leaves Elizabeth and her girls alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times. With no choice left to them, they return to the abandoned family farm.
It is Jeanine Stoddard who devotes herself to rebuilding the farm and their lives. But hard work and good intentions won't make ends meet. In desperation, the Stoddard women place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well and on the back of late patriarch Jack's one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe. And Jeanine must decide if she will gamble it all . . . on love.
Colleen Delany brings out the strength of character in three women who struggle to survive the Depression in Texas. Delany's drawl rings as true as the author's research, and her narration adds to the local color that is so much a part of the story. Delany differentiates the Stoddard daughters with varying tonality. Writer Bea is dreamy; Mayme is practical. The focus character is Jeanine, beloved by her late father, a charming, alcoholic gambler. Delany portrays Jeanine as a complex character, showing her determination when she fights for her family and her confusion as she tries to choose what she really wants in life. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
Paulette Jiles is a poet (has published several volumes) and memoirist. Born and raised in the United States, she now has dual citizenship with Canada. It was there that she won a Canadian Governor General Award (Canada's highest literary honor) for Poetry. Her first book, Cousins ("a sort of memoir") was published by Knopf in 1992. Her first novel, Enemy Women, was published by Morrow in 2002. STORMY WEATHER is her second novel. She lives in Utopia, TX.
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