I just completed reading the Pulitzer Prize Winner for 1992. It is entitled "A Thousand Acres." It is about a family and its large farm in Iowa. The main crops grown on the soil are corn and beans. They raise a few pigs. Their expansion of the pig farm eventually does them in. Timing is a big factor in farming. They were delayed this expansion of the division of property and its control.
Loosely built around the plot of King Lear, this novel covers the tragedies of the three daughters that grow up on the farm. The father without sons decides in a drunken state to will over his farm to his daughters. Caroline the youngest daughter who does not live on the farm, escaped to the big city to become a lawyer. She had doubts about the split and the reasons behind the split. The interaction of the daughters with each other and their respective husbands and the neighbors is what this novel is all about. The other issues covered in this book are child abuse, farm expansion, and division of inheritance.
It is a well written book. It is written in first person narrative. The voice is of the less forward of the three sisters. It is also a slice of the post Viet Nam era from the perspective of the family owned farm.
The sad part is that it is as Dad always says penny dreadfuls. These women face dreadful circumstances, many of which are not their own doing, throughout the book. The women are very different from each other. They are married to very different men. They must work together as a family group for the farm to succeed.
The good part of this novel is that the narrator stays in character throughout. It is an interesting story. It is well crafted. It is not as detailed at the Annie Proulx's shipping News.
I hope you are reading a good book.
Love
Pat
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