NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State
University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
March 12, 1998
Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
©1998 Plains Folk
It's time for a moratorium on land-puns by authors writing about the plains. In the past year we got "Bad Land," a book about eastern Montana by Jonathan Raban, and "Good Land," a book about western Kansas by Bruce Bair. Now, in "A Dry Spell," by Canadian author Susie Moloney, we get a supernatural suspense story set in a fictional town called Goodlands, North Dakota, the slummy section of which is known as Badlands. Moloney is indeed a pun-meister, as the title of her new book refers not only to the drought afflicting Goodlands but also to the cause of it, that is, a sort of curse put on the place by a spirit so desiccated she exhales dust.
I'm not going to tell you "A Dry Spell" is a great book, because it isn't, but for someone from this part of the country it has some interesting aspects. Besides, I think there something important about the book being set in the middle of North Dakota. Sure, it's great that Larry Woiwode and Louise Erdrich write great books about North Dakota, but it means is something different when popular authors choose to set mediocre books here. I just don't know whether it's good or bad.
Which is how the people of Goodlands feel about the rainmaker. Goodlands is in its fourth year of drought, and the manager of its bank—or rather its branch of a Minneapolis bank—Karen Grange, is agonizing over the farm foreclosures she has to prosecute against her friends and neighbors. She's the one who invites the rainmaker, the mysterious and magnetic loner Tom Keatley, to town. It turns out this is no ordinary drought, but rather one designed as revenge on the town by a woman wronged in the past and disturbed in the present. The banker and the rainmaker fall in love, or something like it; weird and catastrophic events ensue; but in the end the key characters survive, the ghost is subdued, and it rains.
First let's deal with some of the silliness. The author needed to spend some time in Mott or Medina before writing the book, because some things just don't ring right. She's a little like her heroine, Karen Grange, who at the start of the book says she "couldn't pick a combine out of a line-up of backhoes." She gives Goodlands an average rainfall that, given evaporation rates on the northern plains, would make the place a swamp. She has her sheriff, Henry Barker, conclude something is not "hinky" about the rainmaker. "Hinky?" She keeps referring to trees, in the style of the Canadian north, as "bush." And she is confused about the difference between a town and a township, a confusion that really gums up the story. This drought of hers is said to be confined to the limits of the town—in which case it would only affect some lawns and gardens.
Looking past these things, it's fascinating to watch the story formulae intertwine. The book is basically a Gothic romance—ominous setting, mysterious characters, supernatural forces abroad on the land. When the rainmaker arrives on the plain or moor or whatever it is, he seems somehow familiar, and then we recognize him: He is Shane. Going along with the classic western formula, the tall, inscrutable stranger arrives on the scene, falls for the woman, and because of her, decides to save the town. The weird events that follow include great cracks in the ground expelling deadly walls of dust. The book's descriptions of the dust clouds, and of people taping the doors and windows, are right in line with regional Dust Bowl narratives.
There is epic stuff here, but in the end, it's all a bit over the top. When Sheriff Barker starts to whistle the theme from "Andy Griffith" while he's driving down the road, you know the author has a weakness for stereotype. There are just too many people possessed by spirits, too many gaping crevices in the ground, too many expendable townspeople knocked off. Everyone knows the plains are full of ghosts, but ours are more discrete than the excessive spirit of "A Dry Spell."
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Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339
Editor: Barry Brissman (701) 231-7866