And Alma did that summer make certain that I knew this spot and that these pictures would be planted in my head, grow epic, never leave: The Arbor Dance Hall stood across the street from a row of small houses and one still stands. A house with nothing to recommend it but its age, shown up meanly in sunlight and made to look ancient in shadow. The yard between the house and the railroad tracks has become a worn patch of dust, the old oaks have withered from their long days and begun to founder toward earth, and no new neighbors have been built. In 1929, on this narrow span of sloping ground between the town square and the tracks beside Howl Creek, there had been six houses, five now gone, the dance hall, and the long-demolished Alhambra Hotel. At the bottom of the yard near the railroad ties and shined rails there are burnished little stumps where elms that likely witnessed everything had been culled in the 1950s after the Dutch blight moved into town and caught them all.
The explosion happened within a shout and surely those in the house must have heard everything on that bright evening, the couples arriving, strolling arm in arm or as foursomes, the excited laughter, the cooed words, the stolen kisses on the way to the dance, all carrying loudly on that blossom-scented night between the wars, here in the town this was then of lulled hearts and distracted spirits. A Saturday of sunshine, the town square bunched with folks in for trading from the hills and hollers, hauling spinach, lettuce and rhubarb, chickens, goats and alfalfa honey. Saturday crowds closed the streets around the square and it became a huge veranda of massed amblers. Long hellos and nodded goodbyes. Farmers in bib overalls with dirty seats, sporting dusted and crestfallen hats, raising pocket hankies already made stiff and angular with salt dried from sweat during the slow wagon ride to town. In the shops and shade there are others, wearing creased town clothes, with the immaculate hankies of gentlefolk folded to peak above breast pockets in a perfect suggestion of gentility and standing. The citizenry mingled—Howdy, Hello, Good gracious is that you? The hardware store is busy all day and the bench seats outside become heavy with squatting men who spit brown splotches toward the gutter. Boys and girls hefted baskets of produce, munched penny candy, and begged nickels so they could catch the matinee at the Avenue Theater. Automobiles and trucks park east of the square, wagons and mules rest north in the field below the stockyard pens, and after supper folks made their way downhill to the Arbor… and just as full darkness fell those happy sounds heard in the surviving house suddenly became a nightmare chorus of pleas, cries of terror, screams as the flames neared crackling and bricks returned tumbling from the heavens and stout beams crushed those souls knocked to ground. Walls shook and shuddered for a mile around and the boom was heard faintly in the next county south and painfully by everyone inside the town limits. Citizens came out their doors, stunned, alarmed to stillness, then began to sprint, trot, stagger in flailing and confused strides toward this new jumping light that ate into the night.
A near portion of the sky founted an orange brilliance in a risen tower, heat bellowing as flames freshened in the breeze and grew, the tower of orange tilting, tossing about, and the sounds dancers let loose began to reach distant ears as anonymous wails and torture those nearby with their clarity of expression. There were those who claimed to have heard words of farewell offered by victims in the air or in the rubble, and some must be true accounts; so many citizens crawled into the flames to pull at blistered, smoking bodies that turned out to be people they knew, sisters, uncles, sons or pals. As with any catastrophe, the witness accounts immediately began to differ, as some saw dancers blown three hundred feet toward the stars and spreading in a spatter of directions, while others saw them go no more than a hundred and fifty feet high, give or take, though all agreed that several fortunate souls were saved from death by the force of their throwing, landing beyond reach of the scorching, pelted with falling debris, yes, and damaged, but not roasted skinless, hairless, blackened and twisted on their bones.
The nearest witness to survive and offer prompt testimony was eighty-nine-year-old Chapman Eades, an ex-Confederate, veteran of Pea Ridge and the siege of Vicksburg, who lived in the Alhambra. He did not see well and could not follow a conversation in his own little room without the aid of an ear trumpet. The next day Mr. Eades said to the West Table Scroll, “I don’t know what they was arguin’ about. They was over behind the back wall and I never seen them as nothin’ but shapes standin’ in shadows. But they was arguin’ about somethin’ awful lively, then the music struck up again and all hell came callin’ soon after.”
Throughout that summer human scraps and remains were discovered in gardens two streets, three streets, four streets away, kicked up in the creek by kids chasing craw-dads, in deep muck at the stockyards halfway up the hill. That fall, when roof gutters were cleaned, so many horrid bits were come across that gutters became fearsome, hallowed, and homeowners let a few respectful leaks develop that winter rather than disturb the dead.
About the Author
Daniel Woodrell was born in the Missouri Ozarks, left school and enlisted in the marines the week he turned seventeen, received his bachelor’s degree at age twenty-seven, graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and spent a year on a Michener Fellowship. The Maid’s Version is his ninth novel. Winter’s Bone, his eighth novel, was made into a film that won the Sundance Film Festival’s Best Picture Prize in 2010 and was nominated for four Academy Awards. Five of his novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the year. Tomato Red won the PEN West Award for the Novel in 1999, and The Death of Sweet Mister received the 2011 Clifton Fadiman Medal from the Center for Fiction. The Outlaw Album was Woodrell’s first collection of stories. He lives in the Ozarks near the Arkansas line with his wife, Katie Estill.
Also by Daniel Woodrell
The Outlaw Album
Winter’s Bone
The Death of Sweet Mister
Tomato Red
Give Us a Kiss
Woe to Live On
The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights,
Muscle for the Wing,
and The Ones You Do (omnibus edition)
EXTRAORDINARY ACCLAIM FOR DANIEL WOODRELL’S
WINTER’S BONE
“Daniel Woodrell’s most profound and haunting work yet.… Instead of resting on past laurels, Woodrell burrows ever deeper into the heart of Ozark darkness, weaving a tale both haunting in its simplicity and mythic in scope.… His prose crackles.… Winter’s Bone jumps with dialogue that is at once formal and demotic, with glorious rhythms and cadence.… If William Faulkner lived in the Ozark Mountains today and wrote short, powerful novels set in that little-understood, much-maligned swath of rural America, he might sound a lot like Daniel Woodrell.”
—Denise Hamilton, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Winter’s Bone is compact, atmospheric, and deeply felt, drenched in the sights, sounds, and smells of the author’s native Ozarks. Woodrell’s novels tap a ferocious, ancient manner of storytelling, shrewdly combining a poet’s vocabulary with the vivid, old-fashioned vernacular of the backwoods.”
—Adam Woog, Seattle Times
“The music coming from Woodrell’s banjo cannot be confused with the sounds of any other writer.… Daniel Woodrell has selected a frightful subject and populated it with the best and the worst of country people, including a courageous, audacious, resourceful sixteen-year-old girl destined to enter the pantheon of literature’s heroines.”
—Donald Harington, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Winter’s Bone is a wonder of a book. Read it once for the story, and a second time for Woodrell’s stunning language and visual artistry. It never disappoints.”
—Laura Philpot Benedict, Grand Rapids Press
“A piercing, intense tale told from way inside, Winter’s Bone is stark evidence that Daniel Woodrell is a writer of exceptional originality and importance.”
—Thomas McGuane
“As serious as a snakebite.… In Winter’s Bone Daniel Woodrell has hit upon the character of a
lifetime. Young Ree Dolly allows Woodrell to glide this novel seamlessly from violence to innocence.… His Old Testament prose and blunt vision have a chilly timelessness that suggests this novel will speak to readers as long as there are readers, and as long as violence is practiced more often than hope or language.”
—David Bowman, NewYork Times Book Review
“As ever, Woodrell’s writing, by turns piquant and fecund, is to be savored. Woodrell, on fire, is a phenomenon. Here, he’s on fire.”
—Paul Connolly, Metro (Belfast)
“Daniel Woodrell has quietly built a career that should be the envy of most American novelists today.… Mr. Woodrell’s milieu is the Missouri Ozarks, a midwestern hinterland tucked between St. Louis and Memphis. In relentless and lyrical prose, Mr. Woodrell’s novels dramatize this region where drugs are rampant, law enforcement is reputedly scarce, and families can trace their descendants back to the European immigrants who first settled the area.… Ree’s is a haunting and timeless tale of growing up hard.… The author’s prose elevates the story into an ethereal realm, even as the most brutal scenes unfold.”
—Eric Wills, Washington Times
“Woodrell captures the language and rhythm of his people with unadorned authenticity.… The plot of Winter’s Bone is uncomplicated, yet it packs a kind of biblical, Old West, Cormac McCarthy wallop—hard and deep.”
—Michael Heaton, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“If merit makes a blockbuster, this one qualifies without reservation.… Ree Dolly’s journey into the heart of darkness is heartbreaking, hopeful, and completely miraculous.… If there is one novel this year that should be on every reader’s list, it’s Winter’s Bone.”
—Advocate (Albany, New York)
“In prose both taut and lyrical, Winter’s Bone vividly evokes the spirit of one little woman warrior.”
—Edna O’Brien
“Daniel Woodrell is a classic storyteller.… In Winter’s Bone, his fine new novel set among lawless men and women in the Ozarks, an uncommon heroine goes on an age-old quest that is Homeric, not just in its larger mythic scope, but in its close focus on tribalism. Sometimes brutal, sometimes mordantly funny, sometimes surprisingly sweet.… I just didn’t want Winter’s Bone to end.”
—Harper Barnes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Woodrell writes in sentences that could be ancient carvings on a tree. Ree’s search takes her through a human bramble thicket of Dolly relatives that could so easily have turned into caricature that we hold our breath and finally gasp in admiration at Woodrell’s restraint.”
—Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune
“Mr. Woodrell’s near-incantatory cadences propel the reader through strange and grisly events.… Ree Dolly inhabits a compelling, semi-apocalyptic landscape where a bleak sun warms nothing, a ‘bringing wind’ rattles the forest, and coyotes call down the moon.”
—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
“Haunting.… Ree Dolly is a force of nature. Her determination can land her in serious trouble—or save the day. Heroines this inspiring don’t come along often. When they do, they deserve our attention.”
—Vick Boughton, People
“I would have followed Ree Dolly into hell for the pleasure of Woodrell’s prose, and Winter’s Bone just about took me there, yet delivered me in the end without sentiment or false promises. A tour de force.”
—Laura Lippman
“Many of us are naive about the pervasive way methamphetamine can affect entire families.… Ree’s struggle to rise above the environment in which she’s raised makes her an unforgettable heroine.”
—Missourian
“A brutal, physical, almost Shakespearean story.… The writing holds the reader like a tiger’s stare.… Winter’s Bone possesses all the power and cunning of a great short story—the ultimate praise.”
—Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
“Woodrell is called a ‘writer’s writer,’ a nod to the high quality of his writing and storytelling while he awaits more notice. Winter’s Bone should do it.”
—Claudia Smith Brinson, The State (Columbia, South Carolina)
“His best yet, an instant classic.… Daniel Woodrell is a stunningly original writer.”
—Associated Press
“Winter’s Bone is unique, astonishing, very, very fine. Ree Dolly is a genuine American folk hero who will crack your heart or make you catch your breath, but who simply will not let you put her down until you hear her full story.”
—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
“Woodrell’s captivatingly resourceful protagonist both enchants and horrifies with her fierce determination.… Woodrell’s novel exposes the tragedy of crystal meth in rural America in all its brutal ugliness in language that is both razor sharp and grimly gorgeous.”
—Beth E. Andersen, Library Journal (starred review)
“A novel of tremendous and, at times, ferocious power.… Everything about Ree’s quest is utterly compelling; everything evoked about the landscape and its people convinces completely.… Winter’s Bone pulses between innocence’s triumph and annihilation; it recognizes that there is ‘a great foulness afoot in the world’ but that we still walk among miracles.”
—Niall Griffiths, Observer (UK)
“Woodrell is the least-known major writer in the country right now.”
—Dennis Lehane, USA Today
“Economical and laconic, wry and witty, the spicy Southern dialect of Woodrell’s home territory in the Ozark hills generates a pacy, page-turning narrative. But whereas the plot of Winter’s Bone breathlessly forces the reader on, the poetry and drama of each crafted phrase and sentence draw us back, setting up a tension in the reading that belongs to the highest order of narrative.… Ree Dolly, caring and funny and crazy with courage, becomes through her enduring power of resistance—like Antigone, Psyche, and Lear—a figure of power.”
—Stevie Davies, Guardian (UK)
“Woodrell’s prose mixes tough and tender so thoroughly yet so delicately that we never taste even a hint of false bravado, on the one hand, or sentimentality, on the other. And Ree Dolly is one of those heroines whose courage and vulnerability are both irresistible and completely believable—think of not just Mattie Ross in True Grit but also Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or even Eliza Naumann in Bee Season. One runs out of superlatives to describe Woodrell’s fiction.”
—Bill Ott, Booklist (starred review)
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with Daniel Woodrell
Questions and Topics for D
iscussion
Preview of The Maid’s Version
About the Author
Also by Daniel Woodrell
Extraordinary Acclaim for Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2006 by Daniel Woodrell
Reading group guide copyright © 2007 by Daniel Woodrell and Little, Brown and Company
Excerpt from The Maid’s Version copyright © 2013 by Daniel Woodrell
Author photograph by Katie Estill
Front cover art courtesy of Roadside Attractions
Cover copyright © 2010 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permission
[email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.