基本信息出版社：Fourth Estate Ltd
页码：352 页
出版日期：2008年03月
ISBN：0007156456
条形码：9780007156450
装帧：平装
正文语种：英语
外文书名：暴雨天

内容简介 From the author of the critically acclaimed 'Enemy Women' comes a brilliant new work of fiction set against the dark days of the Great Depression. Jeanine Stodard sees her family's future rise with each new oil rig that emerges from the Texas hills, and fall with her father's trips out to the dance halls and gambling joints in each new town they set up in. But when her father dies, in dubious circumstances, he leaves behind four women who have no place to go but the abandoned family farm. Elizabeth, her father's widow, invests the last of their money in a million-to-one shot oil well; Mayme, the eldest daughter, applies for a job at the oil company in her tattered dress and dreams of her Prince Charming; Bea, the youngest, scribbles stories in her Big Chief pad and dreams of being a writer; Jeanine, the proud, stubborn middle child, finds the threads of her life woven together of the old Tolliver homestead in surprising ways. They all share but one inheritance left them by their no-good father Jack Stoddard: a dangerous, racing stallion named Smoky Joe. In dark and affecting prose, Paulette Jiles illuminates the hardship, sacrifice and strength of an ordinary family caught short by circumstances beyond their control.
作者简介 Paulette Jiles was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks and now has dual citizenship with Canada. A critically acclaimed poet, she is a past winner of the Canadian Governor General Award, Canada's highest literary honor. Her previous book 'Enemy Women', was highly acclaimed and a New York Times notable book.
编辑推荐 Review
Praise for 'Enemy Women', a Sunday Times Read of the Week and Glamour's 'Must Read' 'I loved "Enemy Women". It is a gritty, memorable book, full of the things I like best in a novel -- a sparky heroine, an unsentimental love story, a confident retelling of the past. It is a delight from start to finish, without a single misstep.' Tracy Chevalier, author of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and 'Falling Angels' 'With the eye of a poet and the rectitude of a historian, Paulette Jiles travels the backroads of the American Civil War and returns with a story that is both gripping and gorgeously rendered. Adair is destined to find a place of honour among the great heroines of modern fiction.' Geraldine Brooks, author of 'Years of Wonders' and 'March' 'Remarkable!entirely deserving of the plaudits it will doubtless continue to receive here. Jiles isn't content with merely telling us something we know already, but sets out to show us what this means, in images of startling beauty and horror.' Christina Koning, The Times 'Although "Enemy Women" is rich in historical research, it is partly Adair's unexpected modernity that makes it so compelling, as she battles her way through war with sharp rejoinders and a waspish wit, by turns fierce, wily and pragmatic!Jiles's epically plotted novel moves to a beat as irresistibly vernacular as its heroine's confession.' Hephzibah Anderson, Observer

Girl grows up in the Depression-era Texas dustbowl in an evocative but ultimately lackluster second novel from Jiles (Enemy Women, 2001).Jeanine is the middle daughter of Jack Stoddard, oil-field roustabout and dirt-track racehorse impresario. At age nine, she's gamely driving drunken, passed-out Dad home in his Tin Lizzie when 19-year-old Ross Everett intervenes, returning the two to Jeanine's mother Elizabeth and her sisters Mayme and Bea. Then comes the Crash, and the Stoddards move from town to town in search of oil jobs. Jack, his brain injured when he's exposed to "sour gas," descends into madness and dies in a jail cell. The women return to Elizabeth's dilapidated childhood farm. Elizabeth invests their dwindling funds in a wildcat oil well. Jeanine salvages the farm, doing all the housework and repairs, rescuing the peach orchard and clearing the land. As dust storms rage, the New Deal is born and war in Europe looms. Mayme meets a handsome soldier, and Bea scribbles pulpy stories in her journal. Jeanine finds two men mildly amusing: now-widowed rancher Ross, who buys her father's last stallion and gives her a stake in its winnings; and impish, stuttering newspaperman Milton, whose Runyonesque monologues consume way too much oxygen and page-space. Bea falls down a well, requiring expensive surgery that threatens to bankrupt the family again - unless that oil well isn't a dry hole after all. Period detail abounds, including authoritative arcana on every subject from oil and horses to windmills and roof patching. Jeanine's life, beset by one homely obstacle after another (nothing her capable hands can't handle of course), waxes anticlimactic as she approaches age 21 and resigns herself without much excitement to marriage. The characters other than Milton are utterly convincing in speech and manner, but they're adrift without a drama in which to act.If feisty Jeanine could find a vehicle with more horsepower, her return would be most welcome. (Kirkus Reviews)