Stormy weather - Paulette Jiles

From the author of the critically acclaimed 'Enemy Women' comes a brilliant new work of fiction set against the dark days of the Great Depression.

Jeanine Stodard sees her family's future rise with each new oil rig that emerges from the Texas hills, and fall with her father's trips out to the dance halls and gambling joints in each new town they set up in. But when her father dies, in dubious circumstances, he leaves behind four women who have no place to go but the abandoned family farm.

Elizabeth, her father's widow, invests the last of their money in a million-to-one shot oil well; Mayme, the eldest daughter, applies for a job at the oil company in her tattered dress and dreams of her Prince Charming; Bea, the youngest, scribbles stories in her Big Chief pad and dreams of being a writer; Jeanine, the proud, stubborn middle child, finds the threads of her life woven together of the old Tolliver homestead in surprising ways. They all share but one inheritance left them by their no-good father Jack Stoddard: a dangerous, racing stallion named Smoky Joe.

In dark and affecting prose, Paulette Jiles illuminates the hardship, sacrifice and strength of an ordinary family caught short by circumstances beyond their control.