A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [0]
A THOUSAND ACRES
“Breathtaking.… Masterly.… Smiley’s most impressive work.”
—USA Today
“An extraordinary novel.… A story rich in heart-tugging revelations that explode in an otherwise placid landscape.… Smiley possesses a persuasive and powerful voice all her own.… [She] may be counted among our most perceptive and eloquent realists.”
—Newsday
“A tour de force.”
—Newsweek
“Not to be missed.… We don’t just read Jane Smiley’s fiction, we fall into it, captivated by the level pitch of her voice, her eye for the stunning detail, her sharp insights.”
—The Plain Dealer
“An intricate and dazzling novel, full of brilliant portraits of family relationships that are never what they seem, laced with layers of mysteries and puzzles.”
—Cosmopolitan
“Smiley’s characters are so hauntingly real you can spend the better part of a day just brooding about them.… [Smiley’s] the kind of writer other writers pass among themselves like a well-guarded secret.”
—The Boston Globe
“Compelling.… Terrific.… This is a novel so rich in themes that one can only marvel at how adeptly Smiley weaves her people and plots and references into a whole as cohesive as the furrowed rows of corn on her fictional farm in Iowa.… A marvelous and moving story of America.”
—Detroit Free Press
Jane Smiley
A THOUSAND ACRES
Jane Smiley is the author of more than ten works of fiction, including Good Faith, Horse Heaven, Moo, and The Greenlanders. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in northern California.
ALSO BY JANE SMILEY
Good Faith
Horse Heaven
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
Moo
Ordinary Love & Good Will
Catskill Crafts
The Greenlanders
The Age of Grief
Duplicate Keys
At Paradise Gate
Barn Blind
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, DECEMBER 2003
Copyright © 1991 by Jane Smiley
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1991. Subsequently published in paperback by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1992.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Smiley, Jane.
A thousand acres / Jane Smiley,
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78771-2
1. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Family farms—Fiction.
3. Farm life—Fiction. 4. Sisters—Fiction. 5. Iowa—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3569.M39T47 1991
813′.54—dc20
91052720
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.1
To Steve, as simple as that.
The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. We were marked by the seasonal body of earth, by the terrible migrations of people, by the swift turn of a century, verging on change never before experienced on this greening planet.
—MERIDEL LE SUEUR,
“The Ancient People and the Newly Come”
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Book Two
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Book Three
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Book Four
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Book Five
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Book Six
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Book One
1
AT SIXTY MILES PER HOUR, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into the T intersection at Cabot Street