A Thousand Acres

This was the latest book selection from Overdrive which popped up for downloading just before we left for Wooster.  I was on the Waiting List for several books; this was the first of three which popped up as Available in a 48-hour time frame.  I started the book, read a little each day, then hit it hard on the drive home.  I was so engrossed into the book that I stayed up late to finish it last night.


This is the first book I have read by Jane Smiley.  At first I identified with the characters and the subject.  After all it was a farm setting in the Midwest.  The family farm had grown in acres over the span of several generations.  The patriarch was well-respected in the community and since he had no sons, his daughters' husbands continued the family legacy.

As I read I could hear my father-in-law and my husband discussing similar topics - who had started planting.  A new tractor that a neighbor had purchased.  Nitrogen tanks appearing in the fields down the road.  Harvest starting rather early....or late for that neighbor two miles over.

And yes, we could stand in the yard, look across the fields and see Ann and Bud's buildings to the southeast.  We could look to the north and see Nielsens and Howard and Judy's house.  Sometimes we could see the dust flying across the ditch to the south at Duck Island.  All of this sounded so similar to the accounts of the families in Smiley's book.

When Harold went out to make one more round side-dressing, showing off his new tractor, and when he didn't shut off the tank when he dismounted the tractor to check a clogged knife, I knew that a disaster was about to occur.  The disconnected hose sprayed Harold in the face, causing permanent blindness.

Yes, there was much in the novel with which I could identify.  But oh my...there was SO much that was not part of the life of this farmer's wife.   No alcohol abuse.  No sexual intimidation and abuse.  No lawsuits between the family members.  No injunctions to stop construction on new hog buildings, thus ruining the plans and dreams and causing financial ruin.  No one drove a truck into a gravel pit and drowned in our family.  No one walked out and left her husband to try to make it on his own with no help on the farm.  The farm wasn't sold to a huge corporation and none of the houses were bulldozed to make room for more acres to plant, thus erasing any remnant of the family that lived there for many generations.

Although none of that has happened, the last sentence in the preceding paragraph has been something I have thought about with our farm.  Now that the main house is not occupied, elimination of the old family home could be a possibility.  Gary isn't 'farming' the land this spring and eventually the land may be sold, losing any and all remnants of the 'family farm' heritage.

Reading the book was partly like reading about our lives, but there was so much that was NOT familiar, luckily, and so very tragic.  A reader such as myself with a farming background can read the book, find some similarities and nod, but frown and shudder when some of the differences scroll across the page.  For someone who is not farm oriented, reading the book could paint a distorted picture of the family farm heritage from years, one that I don't find particularly typical.

It would be interesting to discuss the book with others.  Anyone want to read it?