![]() As dust storms rage, the New Deal is born and war in Europe looms. Jeanine salvages the farm, doing all the housework and repairs, rescuing the peach orchard and clearing the land. Elizabeth invests their dwindling funds in a wildcat oil well. The women return to Elizabeth’s dilapidated childhood farm. Jack, his brain injured when he’s exposed to “sour gas,” descends into madness and dies in a jail cell. Then comes the Crash, and the Stoddards move from town to town in search of oil jobs. At age nine, she’s gamely driving drunken, passed-out Dad home in his Tin Lizzie when 19-year-old Ross Everett intervenes, returning the two to Jeanine’s mother Elizabeth and her sisters Mayme and Bea. Jeanine is the middle daughter of Jack Stoddard, oil-field roustabout and dirt-track racehorse impresario. ![]() Girl grows up in the Depression-era Texas dustbowl in an evocative but ultimately lackluster second novel from Jiles ( Enemy Women, 2001). ![]()
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