Third Day Book for December: Winter’s Bone
Note: Simply Wait is home of the 3rd Day Book Club (and the photo graphic posted here). A list of bloggers who are participating this month can be found at Paris Parfait, December’s host.
Winter’s Bone, a novel by Daniel Woodrell, is set in modern times in the Ozark Mountains, but it might just as easily have taken place in the Appalachian Mountains when moonshine stills were prevalent, family feuds were common, and stubborn independence was the norm.
Or maybe the Dollys, the family the story revolves around, were not mountain hill holler folk, but hobbits living in a shire gone haywire. Maybe Ree Dolly, the heroine, was playing the role of Frodo, and the dark influence running through her quest was not the ring of Mordor, but poverty, drugs, and hard living.
Would the author explain early references made by Ree on the night she stayed in a cave: “Map of Guts,” “Fists of Gods,” and “Fruit of Belief,” I wondered? Or was he going to assume we knew what they meant, like he assumed we knew (or that maybe we would ask our husbands who might be substance abuse counselors) what a “crank chef” was? 
Was the story going to be a fantasy, after all, where icicles appear as “pickets of jagged freeze” crows as “black buttons in twilight,” and where “smoke poured from every chimney and was promptly flattened east by wind?”
I started the book slow, paying attention to the masterful writing, letting myself be enchanted by the weaving of the almost quaint, quilted together colloquial patterns of speech that were new and intriguing to me.
But half way through I started to rush, the story took hold, and I wanted to know. My uncouth habit of flipping pages ahead got the best of me. Was Ree’s dad dead? Murdered? When would Ree, her little brothers, and her mentally unstable mother eat again?
Everybody’s plain spoken, no-nonsense, and gun-toting. Every other person is named Milton, just to confound the law by making it hard for them to be tracked down. There’s Thump Milton, Blond Milton, Catfish Milton, Dog Milton, Punch Milton, Pink-eye Milton and more. Ree, who at age 16 and with her father gone is the family caretaker, fought to have her youngest brother not be named Milton, or Hasslam, or Jessup. Those names were almost a guarantee of them eventually needing the bondsmen who kept turning up in the story.
Some things were not unfamiliar to me. Like Ozark mountain people, Virginians from these parts are resourceful and common sense smart. They know how to make-do and keep to themselves. The book began with a description of deer meat hanging. As I read, two recently hunted deer hung from our shed at the edge of the wood.
And what about this line that Ree said to her girlfriend, Gail, when Gail told Ree she was leaving to go back to her loveless marriage: “You didn’t like it? You gonna tell me you didn’t like it?” Did I read too much into it? Gail answers, “I liked it. I liked it, but not enough.”
Winter’s Bone is not short on grit and substance, realistic gut wrenching scenes, but ultimately it’s a story about family bonds, strength of character, and love; human traits that even the toughest people are softened by.
Post notes: I checked the wikipedia to see if there was an exotic religion unknown to me practiced in the Ozarks. I learned that, indeed, the Ozark mountain people are of the same Scots Irish stock as the majority of the natives here. Scots Irish blood is the stuff that caused Virginia’s Senator-elect, Jim Webb to answer, when asked by President Bush how his boy in Iraq was, “that’s between me and my boy.”
December 3rd, 2006 2:17 pm
You could be right about the meth being the moonshine of the day. I agree that some of the references were a bit obscure – particularly the ones in the cave. Thanks for participating in Third Day. Hope you’ll stop by Simply Wait soon to vote on next month’s selection!
December 3rd, 2006 3:33 pm
interesting.. I’ll look into that book.
December 3rd, 2006 4:41 pm
What a marvelous review! It seems to be infused with your own optimistic spirit. I was so confused by all those Miltons, each one more terrifying and savage than the last!
Anyway, so glad to have you hooked into Third Day! Maybe one of these days you’ll host one?
December 3rd, 2006 5:24 pm
Yes, I kept mentally making that comparison to moonshine. Also, that exchange of dialogue between Gail and Ree, did make me wonder – was it to a more physical aspect of their relationship, or to the drugs, or what? As for the references to the obscure religious beliefs, I kept hoping the author would give more detailed background, even if it was purely a fictional religion, it seemed it must be important to the development of the family’s philosophical differences with the rest of the world. I wondered, too, how much of the novel might be autobiographical, given the author’s bio (enlisted in the Marines the day he turned 17 – hmmm…)
I flew through the last several pages myself – I couldn’t bear being left in such suspense.
Thanks for an interesting, and thought-provoking, review!
December 3rd, 2006 5:34 pm
Interesting review. We all notice different things. I didn’t understand the cave stuff, maybe because I’m not up on the hobbits. I have some moonshine from your neck of the woods in my liquor cabinet. I don’t know who brewed it, but I hope not the Dolly/Milton type of people that Woodrell describes.
December 3rd, 2006 9:56 pm
I agree, the cave stuff was very obscure. Your comparison to the Hobbits is very clever, and quite true to form.
As I read the book, I tended to think about it taking place in the past, and was always jolted a little by the references to modern day – especially the drug elements. So I agree with your perception of meth being the “moonshine” of the area.
I was also interested in your research regarding the Ozarks. I’m of Scots-Irish descent myself -my ancestors were originally from Virgina, Eastern Pennsylvania, and then moved into Kentucky. The protective family element is very strong in my background as well. Interesting to know there is historic background for that!
Great review! Thanks for participating, and I look forward to reading your comments on the next selection.
December 3rd, 2006 10:18 pm
Wasn’t Webb something? Yes when you were describing the novel it sounded like something written by Sharyn McCrumb about the Appalacian region.
December 3rd, 2006 10:45 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ozarks Here’s the link to the wikipedia’s description of Ozark Mountains. If you scroll down some it talks about the culture and the Scots-Irish influence.
December 3rd, 2006 11:18 pm
Sounds like a wonderful book!!! I am already SO guilty of buying book after book… or audiobook after audiobook… and letting them accumulate. I’m going to resist this one for awhile, anyway!
Here via michele today. Nice to see you again!
December 4th, 2006 9:03 am
Tag, you’re it Colleen.
December 4th, 2006 9:51 am
Any time you like Colleen. No hurry, no scurry, no worry, no jury, no judge(ment). Have fun with it when you have time. 🙂
December 4th, 2006 10:19 am
I like the questions you posed Colleen and your take and experience with the novel. Wonderful to start out your piece with the fact that this could have been a similar story in different literary settings. Much peace, JP
December 4th, 2006 1:53 pm
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I loved your review. The Scots-Irish connection was fascinating (I’m Irish). I think the oddly disconnected relationship of the characters with authority felt Irish for me, and now I know why! It’s great reading different reviewers’ takes on the book, and I loved the connection you made with Lord of the Rings. I didn’t think of that, but it makes perfect sense.
December 4th, 2006 3:06 pm
Tarakuanyin, I’ve been visiting all the blogs who posted on the book, and I can’t remember who I said what to at this point. Did I mention that I’m primarily Irish myself with a grandmother from Youghal?
As one of largely Irish descent who lives rurally , not only did I relate (to a degree) to the rural alternative lifestyle portrayed in the book, but I can see how an offshoot of people of Scots-Irish descent, who have always been used to providing for themselves, might end up meeting their needs through making and selling drugs. To the mainstream culture this appears utterly deviant but I can see how some people who don’t take well to nine to five jobs might find alternative ways, good and bad, to exist. However unhealthy this particular manifestation might be, it does fit in with the over-all resourceful independent thread that runs through the Scots-Irish people. There is a code of conduct that is cultural, one that was developed from a wilder nature, that I saw playing out in the story as well. The original Scots-Irish here were spread out and geographically isolated by mountainious country, not like more close knit northern cities where you had sheriffs and such, and so they learned to take care of their own problems … a double edged sword? .. no pun intended.
Here, we have long time rural natives of largely Scotts Irish descent mixed with back-to-the-land artist transplants, and so non-mainstream lifestyles abound.
December 4th, 2006 4:38 pm
The old time moonshiners, like many old time crafters in this area, took pride in their work. I’m not sure modern day manufacturers always feel that way, though, so careful what you get ahold of. Somehow meth just doesn’t have the romantic ring to it that moonshine did.
December 4th, 2006 5:30 pm
I agree totally, Leslie. That’s sort of what I meant by the shire gone haywire. From my point of view, the moonshine making tradition was just another aspect of providing sustenance and sustainablity.
December 4th, 2006 9:04 pm
Hi Colleen,
How nice to come back from walking my dogs to read that you’d written a response to my response. It almost feels like a face-to-face book club with all the comments flying back and forth. I didn’t know you had an Irish grandmother. I agree with you about that strain of independent, self-sustaining blood running through the Irish and the Scottish, and how it could have shaped those living in the rural U.S. It makes sense applied to the characters in the book, too. TK
December 5th, 2006 9:42 am
THis is a great review. Now, I must put this on my list of books to read.