Stormy Weather: A Novel

Product Description

From Paulette Jiles, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Enemy Women, comes a poignant and unforgettable story of hardship, sacrifice, and strength in a tragic time—and of 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—responsible Mayme, whip-smart tomboy Jeanine, and bookish Bea—know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks; that is, when he’s not spending his meager earnings at gambling joints, race tracks, and dance halls. And in every small town in which the windblown family settles, 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 than they ever anticipated 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, proud and stubborn, who single-mindedly devotes herself to rebuilding the farm and their lives. But hard work and good intentions won’t make ends meet or pay the back taxes they owe on their land. In desperation, the Stoddard women place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well that eats up what little they have left . . . and on the back of late patriarch Jack’s one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe. And Jeanine, the fatherless “daddy’s girl,” must decide if she will gamble it all . . . on love.

From Publishers Weekly

Jiles’s eloquent, engaging sophomore novel celebrates four strong women toughing out the Great Depression in the Texas dust bowl. As the book opens in 1927, Elizabeth Stoddard and husband Jack have three daughters: the pretty Mayme, the tomboyish Jeanine and the writerly Bea. Jeanine, resented for being daddy’s favorite, soon becomes the novel’s primary point of view. After the disgraced Jack dies in 1937, the four Stoddard women move back to the 150-acre homeplace on the Brazos River in Central Texas. Drought, hail and dust storms, land-tax debts and grinding poverty make life a struggle; radio shows, horse-racing, wildcat oil well speculation and stuttering news reporter friend Milton Brown provide diversions. Jeanine falls in love with local rancher Ross Everett; Mayme dates soldier Vernon. Visceral detail of the 1930s rancher life and the hardscrabble setting add authenticity, particularly in the characters’ feel for horses. While forthright, some of the dialogue is less than believable (as when Ross compliments Jeanine on her “furious bloody purple” dress), but it serves the characters’ greater-than-usual emotional bandwidth. Jiles winds this gritty saga up on the eve of WWII with a patchwork quilt’s worth of hope.
(May)
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From Booklist

In her second novel, following the acclaimed
Enemy Women (2002), Jiles proves herself an exceptional writer. This stirring story of four women–Elizabeth Stoddard and her three daughters, Mayme, Jeanine, and Bea–struggling to survive during the Depression is set against a barren Texas landscape, still suffering the effects of a long drought and devastating dust storms. The Stoddards, having followed their charming patriarch, Jack, from one oil field to another, must now cope with his death from a gas leak. His love of gambling and liquor has left them destitute; they return to their long-abandoned family farm, where they face a hefty bill for back taxes. Jack’s one legacy is an underfed racehorse named Smoky Joe. Jeanine, smart and practical, is forced to sell the horse to cover their debts but takes a percentage of his winnings; meanwhile, her mom invests in a wildcat oil well.