This summer two of my absolute favorite books are being given the big screen treatment and while I want the films to succeed in direct correlation to the level of authenticity of the novels and the degree they honor the spirit of their sources, I absolutely want you to read the books first.
The first is Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell.
At sixteen years old, Ree Dolly bears responsibility for her household in the Missouri Ozarks, caring for her unwell mother and two younger brothers while her father Jessup, a Meth cook out on bond, is in the wind. Deputy Baskin brings her the news:
“You know Jessup’s out on bond, don’t you?”
“So what?”
“You know he cooks crank, don’t you?”
“I know that’s the charges you laid against him. But you ain’t proved it on him.”
“S***, Jessup’s just about the best crank chef these Dollys and them ever had, girl. Practically half famous for it. That’s why he pulled them years away up in the pen, there, you know. It was sure ‘nough proved on him that time.”
“That was last time. You got to prove it on him every time.”
“That won’t be no hard thing to do. But this noise, this noise ain’t even why I’m here. Why I’m here is, his court date is next week and I can’t seem to turn him back up.”
“Maybe he sees you comin’ and ducks.”
“Maybe he does. That could be. But where you-all come into this is, he put this house, here, and those timber acres up for his bond.”
“He what, now?”
“Signed it all over. You didn’t know? Jessup signed over everything. If he don’t show for trial, see, the way the deal works is, you-all lose this place. It’ll get sold from under you. You’ll have to get out. Got somewhere to go?”
Ree dreams of joining the marines where everybody has to chip in with the chores and escaping the rut of her parents’ lives, but she’s committed to her younger brothers more so. “Ree’s grand hope was that these boys would not be dead to wonder by age twelve, dulled to life, empty of kindness, boiling with mean. So many Dolly kids were that way, ruined before they had chin hair…”
Ree takes it upon herself to track her delinquent father down to save her family and their home. On her way she runs afoul of her own kin, an outlaw clan as tight-lipped as they are dangerous. She is warned at every turn to cease her quest and stop asking questions and making noise. Those warnings she neglects and pays dearly for it, but her pluck and determination don’t know better than to quit.
That Daniel Woodrell is our least known major writer is an opinion offered often among his peers and critics and, frequently accompanied by that claim, his command of language is cited. The way it submits to his will and whim is breathtaking without ever being showy. Far from the lingual pyrotechnics of postmodern heroes, his prose is lean and precise, equal parts lush and muscular, or as Annie Proulx put it, “Woodrell alternates between reaming the language with a dry corncob and practicing a particularly skillful kind of literary cabinetwork.” The way I’d put it—no one constructs more gorgeous prose out of terrible English.
But that alone is not the reason his books cry out to be read.
The heart that beats beneath the layers of blood and grit in Winter's Bone is one of rare tenacity and merit. Ree Dolly deserves to be canonized in contemporary American myth alongside the likes of Atticus Finch and The Father. It’s that all too rare and devastating combination of technique and substance that elevates both the reader and the craft that demands you participate.
(Good news for anyone looking for more Daniel Woodrell books, Busted Flush Press will be bringing back into print Tomato Red and The Death of Sweet Mister very soon.)
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
