Just Jennifer

The Quickening Michelle Hoover (Other Press, June 29, 2010)

In a sometimes awkward narrative, two women relate their story as neighbors on rural Iowa farms in the years just before and during the Great Depression. Enidina Current is in her early thirties when she marries Frank and moves a day’s wagon ride from the only home she ever knew to an isolated farm where she will become a farmer’s wife. Enidina is a sturdy woman of few words and is not afraid of hard work. Her nearest neighbor is Mary Morrow, who lives with her husband Jack and their sons. Mary is quieter and more reserved than Enidina, her husband very volatile. Mary makes attempts at friendship with Enidina and the two settle into an uneasy friendship born of mutual need in spite of their differences. The Great Depression and how each family deals with the consequences begins to drive a wedge between the two women, but when an unspeakable tragedy occurs, their lives will be irrevocably connected yet their relationship will never be healed. The writing is as stark as the Iowa landscape, but each chapter is told by a different woman, sometimes the same events are retold, and there is often not enough difference to warrant the two points of view. Enidina is telling her story as a letter written to an unknown grandchild, making the point of view even more awkward in places. Quiet prose with a steady undercurrent moves the plot along as the lives of these two families are slowly revealed.