NOW IN NOVEMBER

This Depression-era Dust Bowl novel, which won the Pulitzer in 1935 when its author was an astonishing 24, is beautifully written, and Carlotta Brentan's performance serves the plangent text perfectly. Marget is the middle daughter in a once-comfortable family now on a steep slope to disaster. Her beautiful older sister, Kerrin, is unstable, their farm is mortgaged, and their father is temperamentally ill-equipped to handle misfortune as unrelenting as the drought and collapse of community coming toward them. One thinks of Willa Cather and Steinbeck, but the power and poetry here is all Johnson's own. Brentan's delivery is warm and intelligent, her Marget full of the courage of youth. We know the rains won't come in time. Brentan's Marget doesn't, which makes her hope heartbreaking. B.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2022]