Winter's Bone Book

Houses above looked caught on the scraggly hillsides like crumbs in a beard and apt to fall as suddenly. They'd been there two or three lifetimes, though, and cascades of snow, mushes of rain, and huffing spring wind had tried to knock them loose and send them tumbling but never did. There were narrow footpaths wending all about the slopes between the trees, along the rock ledges, from house to house, and in better weather Ree thought Hawkfall looked sort of enchanted, if a place could be enchanted but not too friendly.
No idea why I waited more than ten years to read this powerful little book.

In Winter's Bone, the setting is its own character. This icy rural universe in the Ozarks comes to life on the page-- a living, breathing, violent thing, where snow and cold are as big a danger as the criminals and meth cooks who populate this isolated place. Wuthering Heights, one of my favourite books of all time, uses its setting in a similar way. Creating a place that feels separate from the rest of humanity and allowing the characters to exist and interact in this bubble, wild and living by their own rules. I personally find it extremely effective.

In some ways, it makes this Southern Gothic read like a fairy tale. It truly feels like a separate universe' there's no contemporary references, no mention of U.S. politics or pop culture ' the characters exist in a world of their own. And, in this world, the Dolly family, "old blood", have their own mythos:
The big man and prophet who'd found messages from the Fist of Gods written on the entrails of a sparkling golden fish lured with prayer from a black river way east near the sea was Haslam, Fruit of Belief.
The story itself is a bit of True Grit, a bit of McCarthy and O'Connor, and, it occurred to me, what I should have been reading instead of attempting to read Where the Crawdads Sing. It's far more compelling and gritty. It's a harsh survival story in which a tough teenage girl (but realistically so; no cardboard cutouts here) attempts to find out why her father is missing and skipped bail before her family loses their home.

I loved Ree Dolly. She's tough, hardened by the harsh realities of life in poverty, but not cold and aloof because of it. The warmth of her love for her brothers and her friend Gail cuts through the chill of the novel. She sets out to talk to higher members of the Dolly clan but, blood or not, this is a dangerous task. Someone knows what happened to her father and it seems they want it to stay hidden.

It's far more survival than it is mystery, though. This rural backcountry is rife with meth addiction, alcoholism and poverty. There are people willing to hurt others to keep their own secrets. And just living, day-by-day, is hard.

It is sometimes amazing what an author can pack into less than two hundred pages.

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