Too good to be true

All over the oil fields and through the overcrowded towns, each person had some small reason that the snowfall was for them alone, a sign that their lives were going to get better.

Paulette Jiles, Stormy Weather

Most lives did get better. In Texas during the 1930s, with Depression, drought and dust storms to contend with, there was nowhere to go but up. Paulette Jiles tells in Stormy Weather (2007), her second novel, about how one particular family of women struggle to make their lives better.

Most of the focus falls on Jeanine, Elizabeth Stoddard's middle daughter, a determined, hard-working young woman who had been her father's favorite because she had covered for him when he went out drinking and gambling, often with her in tow. Soon he's dead under embarrassing circumstances, and the four women are on their own, though not necessarily worse off than they were moving from one oil field to another with a man who wasted whatever money he made.

They return to the home of the girls' grandparents only to discover they owe back taxes. Mayme, the older sister, gets a job. Elizabeth invests what little money they have in an oil well. Bea, the youngest, dreams of becoming a writer. Jeanine, however, wants to keep the land and make it pay, drought or no drought. Soon she is forced to sell her prized possession, a horse named Smoky Joe, although she retains a 10 percent share in any money he might win in match races.

Jiles writes with a style that says literature, yet the resolution of her plot screams schlock. We expect their lives to get better. But when the drought ends, the wildcat well strikes oil, Smoky Joe wins his race, Bea makes her first magazine sale and Jeanine finds true love, it all seems too good to be true.