This was not my favorite novel of Jiles' but it was good. A The beginning felt like it was going in fast forward until the book settled itself into the crux of the story. ( )

“Jeanine you’re just always messing with me.”
“I know it.”


The weather in Texas is stormy, but not with rain. This is the world of Texas oil fields, of dust-bowl drought, of abject poverty and the wildcat oil rigs and sleek race horses that promise to buy a reprieve from it. It is the world of the Great Depression and Jeanine Stoddard is a spunky young lady, unafraid of hard work and at home in the man’s world through which her charming ne'er-do-well father drags her.

Perhaps one of the themes of this book is how important it is to be an individual and lay your own course, but also how easily you can slip into the world you dream of and, doing so, lose your way in the world that is real. Nothing impressed this upon me like the following passage, in which it is impossible not to see Jack Stoddard as someone, like all the rest of us, who simply lost his way and cannot handle the responsibility he has taken on.

He had grown up on the land that is now Camp Wolters in Central Texas, near Mineral Wells. He had grown up there when it was open country covered with the wind-worn pelt of native grasses. Once he had come upon the skull of a Comanche with a bullet hole in the cheekbone and after some exploration he had found the thighbones and ribs and tangles of buckskin fringe. During high school in Mineral Wells he had memorized Travis’ last letter from the Alamo and declaimed it at graduation. He used to ride the Mineral Wells street railway to Elmhurst Park where there was a racetrack and a casino and the wind made women’s long dresses fly up so you could see black stocking garters with the red marks they made and it moved him in inexplicable ways so that he laughed and elbowed Chigger Bates. He had seen Yellow Jacket run the 880. He shifted his feet and smoked and said we all wanted our parents to be better parents.

One of my favorite characters is Ross Everett. For me he exudes personality. He is strong and tough, but also sensitive and caring, with a quick wit and a dry sense of humor. I had an absolute idea of him in my mind, down to the tilt of his head when he dusts dirt off his stetson. The love affair here is a teasing game, and I read it knowing that I was being teased right along with the lovers.

Much of what makes this book special for me is the nostalgia it evokes for the world just before World War II, that was cruel, but in so many ways, so sweet. The strong family ties, the descriptions of the towns, the relationships that develop, and the haphazard nature of happiness, are drawn with such detail and credibility. There is the impossible nature of the Depression:

Nothing could ever be fixed, no matter how hard Jeanine tried. It all just broke again but there was no other way but to lay hands on the pieces and fit them together, make them work.

And the poignant observation of how precarious existence is:

Everything had a family to feed, it was just a matter of who ate who and devil take the hindmost.

And yet there is so much love on every page, Jack’s love for Jeanine and hers for him, the love of the girls for one another and their mother, the love that plays in and out between two of the main characters, and the simple love of the neighbors who plow the fields and lend a hand. I was caught up in it immediately and hated to reach the end and know the story was done.

Paulette Jiles is an astute and skilled storyteller. I have spent time with her in five books and I am anxious and ready to do it again. She has a penchant for penning characters that are as real as your neighbors or sisters, and choosing just the right elements from the history books and the fads of the time to make it something you live. Cultural references are everywhere, but placed within the details of the story so that there is nothing jarring or overdone in them. The times are hard, but what we know, that the characters do not, is that World War II is on the horizon and these hard times will constitute a sweet memory soon, a memory of youth and possibility before a storm of loss.


( )

A believable story of one family's survival of the Great Depression in Texas. The characters are captivating and ones that you can really like. The author takes us through dust storms, into hot, dusty, cotton fields, poverty, the people trying to overcome it, triumphs and tragedy, among it the awakenings of love. It’s all here in this saga. While there isn't a "plot" in the traditional sense... it's a powerful story that takes you into the era so you feel as though you are living it with the characters, and it makes us modern people very glad that we aren’t. What I appreciated most was that Jiles is dealing with the lives of ordinary people as they strive to survive and prosper in harsh conditions, always facing the threat of poverty and starvation. The book is a little slow, but overall, very good. ( )

I feel like I should go brush the grit from my teeth after reading this dusty Texas tale. Good storyline. Would have enjoyed learning more about the supporting characters and I'd love to read aa sequel. I think there is a lot more story to tell! ( )

“All over the oil fields and through the overcrowded towns, each person had some small reason that the snowfall was for them alone, a sign that their lives were going to get better.” — Paulette Jiles, “Stormy Weather”

Most lives did get better. In Texas during the 1930s, with Depression, drought and dust storms to contend with, there was nowhere to go but up. Paulette Jiles tells in “Stormy Weather” (2007), her second novel, about how one particular family of women struggle to make their lives better.

Most of the focus falls on Jeanine, Elizabeth Stoddard's middle daughter, a determined, hard-working young woman who had been her father's favorite because she had covered for him when he went out drinking and gambling, often with her in tow. Soon he's dead under embarrassing circumstances, and the four women are on their own, though not necessarily worse off than they were moving from one oil field to another with a man who wasted whatever money he made.

They return to the home of the girls' grandparents only to discover they owe back taxes. Mayme, the older sister, gets a job. Elizabeth invests what little money they have in an oil well. Bea, the youngest, dreams of becoming a writer. Jeanine, however, wants to keep the land and make it pay, drought or no drought. Soon she is forced to sell her prized possession, a horse named Smoky Joe, although she retains a 10 percent share in any money he might win in match races.

Jiles writes with a style that says literature, yet the resolution of her plot screams schlock. We expect their lives to get better. But when the drought ends, the wildcat well strikes oil, Smoky Joe wins his race, Bea makes her first magazine sale and Jeanine finds true love, it all seems too good to be true. ( )