terrific novel that coalesces around the unexpected connections among people in the fictional community of Words, Wisconsin. The characters’ perceptions about the landscape, their lives and each other are continually arresting yet almost casually right on.”
—Isthmus
“Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, Rhodes’s first novel in over 30 years is set in a rural area of Wisconsin so remote and forgotten that it’s left off the map. Most of the residents have chosen to be isolated from the world around them and one another. Nevertheless, their concerns—the meaning of spirituality, family, love, and desire—are global and universal. The characters and their struggles come vibrantly alive.”
—Library Journal
“Driftless has been a long time coming, but definitely worth the wait. This is David Rhodes’ most accomplished work yet—vividly imagined, shrewd, and compassionate. He is a master at uncovering the extraordinary lives of seemingly ordinary people. The characters of his small rural town become as mysterious, interconnected, and richly idiosyncratic as the landscape they struggle against and embrace. A wonderful novel.”
—Joseph Kanon, author of Los Alamos and The Good German
“I have seldom read a book that so proves that each one of us stars in our own lives. Read this book some place where no one is depending on you for any other calls on your time or attention. Supper can wait.”
—Joanne Greenberg, author of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
ALSO BY DAVID RHODES
The Last Fair Deal Going Down
Easter House
Rock Island Line
To Edna
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE DRIFTLESS STORY TOOK OVER TEN YEARS TO COMPLETE AND IT’S not like I wasn’t trying. One reason may be the characters who wanted to be written about. They were for the most part not the kind of characters who usually find their way into print—very private, never satisfied with their assigned roles, always wanting their voices to be more accurately rendered and their feelings better dramatized. Some were more comfortable with my wife, Edna, than with me, and for over a decade she tirelessly advocated on their behalf. Her assistance was instrumental throughout the entire process.
The work would never have been finished without the additional help of many generous people. The life and times of my friend Mike Cannell provided vital inspiration. Others helped with sage advice, editing, critical insights, living facts, and invaluable intuitions. These include: Mike Austin, Pam Austin, Steve Barza, Barry Clark, Jenny Clark, William Davis, Peter Egan, Jim Goodman, Francis Goodman, Rebecca Goodman, Darrel Hanold, Linda Kiemele, John Kinsman, Charlie Knower, Patti Knower, Lewis Koch, Jim Kolkmeier, Leslie Kolkmeier, Jerry McConoughey, Judy McConoughey, Kathleen Nett, Jim Noland, Bronwyn Schaefer Pope, Luther Rhodes, Stephen Rhodes, Paul Schaefer, Ed Schultz, Alexandra Stanton, Blaine Taylor, Judy Taylor, and Peter Whiteman. I’m grateful to my agent Lois Wallace, and I especially want to acknowledge Milkweed editor Ben Barnhart for his creative discernment and priceless suggestions on structure and tone. Thanks to all.
PROLOGUE
IN SOUTHWESTERN WISCONSIN THERE IS AN AREA ROUGHLY ONE hundred and sixty miles long and seventy miles wide with unique features. Its rugged terrain differs from the rest of the state. The last of the Pleistocene glaciers did not trample through this area, and the glacial deposits of rock, clay, sand, and silt—called drift—are missing. Hence its name, the Driftless Region. Singularly unrefined, it endured in its hilly, primitive form, untouched by the shaping hands of those cold giants.
As the glacial herd inched around the Driftless Region, it became an island surrounded by a sea of receding ice. There, plant spores and pollen, frozen for tens of thousands of years, regained their ability to grow. Moss fastened to the back of rocks. Birds and other creatures carried in seeds, which sprouted, rooted, and prospered. Hardwoods and evergreens rose into the sky, with warmth-loving tree tribes settling on southern hillsides and cold- loving tribes on northern slopes.
Rivers and streams—draining fields for the glaciers and migratory paths for animals—poured into the Mississippi River valley. The waters rushed thick with salmon, red trout, and pike, which in turn attracted osprey, heron, otter, mink, and others who lived by fishing. In time, larger animals moved in, including bear, woolly mammoth, giant sloth, saber-toothed tiger, mountain lion, and a two-hundred-pound species of beaver. (The name Wisconsin is believed by some to be a derivation of the word Wishkonsing, place of the beaver.)
With the wildlife came humans, and for thousands of years people about whom there can now be only speculation conducted civilization from those ancient woods. The summer camp of the Singing People was once located in the Driftless.
The first Europeans to arrive were trappers, hunters, and berry pickers—men who lived much as the people who were already there, often mating and living with them. In time, trading posts sprung up along the larger rivers, attracting more trappers and hunters. Rafts piled high with furs floated downstream, until the supply of cash animals was nearly exhausted.
Then a larger wave of immigrants came, displacing the frequently moving trappers, hunters, and foragers. Trading posts gave way to forts, farms, and villages.
The new arrivals, almost without exception, came in search of homesteads. Families as numerous as church mice rode in wagons on wheels with wooden spokes pulled by oxen and mules, dreaming of Property. When they arrived, they climbed out of their wagons, sharpened their axes, and moved into the Driftless to harvest a ripe and waiting crop: timber. Logging roads and lumber mills invaded the hills, and within a single generation the Driftless forests—like the rest of Wisconsin’s virgin oak, pine, and maple—were cut, floated downstream, and made into railroad ties and charcoal.
After the settlers cut down the trees and dug up all the lead and gold they could find, many abandoned the Driftless in search of flatter, richer farming. Those who remained were generally the more stubborn agriculturists, eking a living from small farms perched on the sides of eroded hills. Like the Badger State totem that burrows in the ground for both residence and defense, they refused to leave. For better or worse, their roots ran deep.
Small villages blossomed with schools, post offices, and implement dealers; dairy and grain cooperatives; hardware, fabric, and grocery stores; filling stations, banks, libraries, and taverns. And the Driftless farmers moved into these villages after their bodies wore out. Old men and women sat on porches in work clothes faded by the sun and softened by innumerable washings to resemble pajamas. They talked in whispers, shelling hazelnuts into wooden bowls, telling stories, endless stories, about long ago.
The young people listened but were skeptical. It didn’t seem possible for men and women to do the things described in those stories: people didn’t act like that.
“They don’t now,” the old people complained.
It was impossible to explain how in those days, in earlier times, in the past, there really were giants—people who did things, good things, odd things, that others would never do. Those giants were at the
