REVIEWS

“In vividly realized scenes involving family secrets, legal battles, gambling, and miracle cures, Rhodes illuminates the wisdom acquired through hard work, the ancient covenant of farming, and the balm of kindness. Encompassing and incisive, comedic and profound, Driftless is a radiant novel of community and courage.”—Booklist (starred review)

“A series of portraits that resemble Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology in their vividness and in the cumulative picture they create of village life. Each of these stories glimmers.”—New Yorker

“[His] finest book yet….the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years.”—Chicago Tribune

“Unique, funny, absorbing, at times frightening. A novel crafted by a real writer.”—California Literary Review, Best Books of 2008

“A profound and enduring paean to rural America. Radiant in its prose and deep in its quiet understanding of human needs.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“A symphonic paean to the stillness that can be found in certain areas of the Midwest, The writing in Driftless is beautiful and surprising throughout, [and] it’s this poetic pointillism that originally made Rhodes famous.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Though Driftless is a deeply contemporary tale—what it has to say about the way corporations treat small farmers is, for example, quite pressing—it also has the architectural complexity of the great 19th-century novels, but without the gimcrackery too often required to hold their stories together. It partakes as much of the moral universe of Magnolia as of Middlemarch. And it earns comparison to both.”—Books & Culture

“Rhodes shows he still knows how to keep readers riveted.”—Publishers Weekly

DAVID RHODES received an MFA degree from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1971. He published three novels in rapid succession The Last Fair Deal Going Down, The Easter House, and Rock Island Line. In 1977 a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. He lives with is wife, Edna, in rural Wisconsin.



* packaged in a sturdy vinyl case.