Rural Beauty

Driftless, a novel by David Rhodes

Horse

In its stall stands the 19th century,

its hide a hot shudder of satin,

head stony and willful, 

an eye brown as a river and watchful:

a sentry a long way ahead

of a hard, dirty army of hooves. 

-Ted Kooser-

For many years I spent my summers driving on the blue highway of rural America, sleeping in my bivy sack on the sides of dirt roads, eating in local diners, drinking Old Style and Hamms in downtown taverns.  Each July I'd pick a route that would take me through states I came to love--Wisconsin and Minnesota, Kansas and Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana. I scrupulously avoided interstates and Holiday Inns; if I slept in a bed it was in the Downtown Motel for nineteen dollars a night.  I made a point of driving only a few hundred miles a day, thus leaving many hours to explore every local historical marker, every regional museum, and all of the "sights" suggested by the locals.  If it was America's Biggest, or Oldest, or most remote I would go out of my way to see it: the tallest man-made structure, the last outpost of the pony express, the Kansas Farm Museum, the birthplace of virtually every president.  I did this out of restlessness (since passed) and out of an abiding interest in the lives of my fellow Americans, most of whom live no where in particular--in small villages and dying towns, in farming communities like Wonewoc, Wisconsin, home of David Rhodes, the genius.

I was disheartened, to say the least, when I read Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land, a very sad book about Louisiana's Tea Party members, men and women filled with hatred for almost everything that feels worthwhile about this country.  My own experience of rural America--limited, of course, but compared to everyone but Charles Kuralt I've seen a fair piece of the country, the entire lower forty-eight, and the sad sacks Hochschild interviews--people who prefer cancer-producing toxic spills to government regulations--seem to me anomalous if not aberrant.  I made a point of having morning coffee in rural towns with the local farmers and (once in a while) their wives, and while I found them conservative compared to my urban neighbors, they were reasonable, thoughtful, and welcoming, truly the salt of the earth.

Rhodes, a prodigy who wrote three wonderful novels during the middle 1970's and then was silenced for three decades after a motorcycle accident, is a deeply compassionate chronicler of the lives of invisible people--farmers and small-town ministers and Amish families and housewives whose greatest concern might well be the state of their housekeeping on the eve of Mother's visit. That is to say, Rhodes writes about us, for this is who we really are, not gun-slinging heroes or angst-ridden intellectuals or cyborgs, we're ordinary folk, overwhelmed by the cost of living, the loss of love, our kids' future, the fear of dying.  It amazes me that Rhodes's critics fault him for the quiet dignity of his characters' lives. Quiet dignity is the entire point, and no one I've read, including Kent Haruf, Ivan Doig, and Richard Russo, does a better job of bringing to life the small town, the destitution (economic and spiritual)  of rural America imposed on us all by the coastal elites. 

Driftless, a novel I read with profound pleasure and admiration, is a richly imagined collection of short stories, of vignettes, linked by common characters and overlapping themes.  July Montgomery, a figure in nearly all of Rhodes's work, settles in Word, Wisconsin and takes up dairy farming after a long life on the road,  Over the course of twenty years he takes on a shamanistic character in the tiny farming town. Folks come to him not only to borrow tools but for his good sense and, as July himself puts it, his love for his neighbors.  There's a lonely widower, a mystical preacher, a young couple bent on justice, an Amish family and their extended clan, a wheel-chair bound young woman who finds love at a dog fight, a cranky retired farmer whose discovered capacity for fellow feeling is one of Rhodes's finest achievements.  Over the course of a year this endlessly interesting cast of characters lives through the kinds of changes that all of us live through.  We search for love and truth and justice; mostly we don't find them, but that doesn't deter us from searching.

Rhodes's style is lyrical, poetic, generous.  I read long passages aloud to my wife, sharing the beauty of language with her but also marveling at the cadences of Rhodes's description, the economy of his character sketches, the visual power of the landscape he describes.  Every set piece has a moment of reflection embedded in it; every character possesses a voice that is his or hers alone, an inner world brought to life with great economy.  You'll find yourself missing July's wisdom, Olive's impetuousness, Jacob's decency.  Not a book to be missed at a time when Americans have been polarized--for nefarious political purposes--into antagonistic tribes. Read Rhodes and discover once again our shared humanity.

 Driftless is published by Milkweed editions.

George Ovitt (8/26/2018)