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Summary
Summary
Early July, and the corn in eastern Nebraska stands ten feet tall; after a near-decade of drought, it seems too good to be true, and everyone is watching the sky for trouble. For the Grebels, whose plots of organic crops trace a modest patchwork among the vast fields of soybeans and corn, trouble arrives from a different quarter in the form of Elsa's voice on her estranged son's answering machine: "Your father's dead. You'll probably want to come home."nbsp;
When a tractor accident fells the patriarch of this Mennonite family, the threads holding them together are suddenly drawn taut, singing with the tensions of a lifetime's worth of love and faith, betrayal and shame. Through the competing voices of those gathered for Haven Grebel's funeral, acts of loyalty and failures, long-suppressed resentments and a tragic secret are brought to light, expressing a larger, complex truth.
Author Notes
Ladette Randolph is the editor-in-chief of Ploughshares magazine and is Distinguished Publisher-in-Residence at Emerson College. She is the award-winning author of A Sandhills Ballad (Nebraska, 2011), This Is Not the Tropics , and Leaving the Pink House , and editor of two anthologies, including A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers . She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation grant, four Nebraska Book Awards, and the Virginia Faulkner Award.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This second novel (after A Sandhills Ballad) from Ploughshares editor Randolf follows a Mennonite family in the days surrounding the death of its patriarch, Haven Grebel. Slowly paced and at times digressive, the novel generously renders the Grebel family even as it exposes their prejudices and failures. Haven's wife, Elsa, has managed her life with stern stoicism and, following the death of her larger-than-life husband, struggles to maintain harmony in the fractious family unit. Jonathan, the eldest son, has left the fold for life in Boston and his brother Jeffery is mired in depression. Haven's death, Jonathan's return, and the sharp curiosity of Jeffery's young daughter Anna June collude to upset Elsa's fiercely controlled borders. Inevitably, the Grebel family history is neither as clean or straightforward as it first appears; as the family grieves, darker turns in their shared past resurface and must be addressed. The novel is a touch uneven and drags in places, but Randolph is an excellent writer, telling the story with a frankness and humor that keeps it from sinking into melodrama. (Mar) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Haven, the aptly named patriarch of a rural Mennonite family in eastern Nebraska, dies in a bizarre tractor accident, which reunites his family for several days in July 2009. Disparate and even dysfunctional, the Grebel clan is forced onto the farm's close quarters where long-ignored secrets and tragedies threaten to surface, despite the desperation of Haven's widow, Elsa, to keep them buried. Will Elsa finally forgive her son for renouncing the Mennonite religion and lifestyle? Will brothers Jonathan and Jeffrey let a sibling's horrific but decades-old death tear them further apart? Will granddaughter Anna June cope with the loss of her best friend? Randolph's (A Sandhills Ballad, 2009) examination of these conflicts, especially the shirking of religion, is at times heavy-handed and obvious. During her more subtle moments, however, Randolph thoughtfully contemplates individuality in a community of conformity, truth in a world of evasiveness, and honesty in a sea of hurt. With prose that vivifies the intricate patchwork of characters and captures the landscape's simplicity, Haven's Wake explores the various attempts to explain the unexplainable, including family, faith, and death.--Fronk, Katharine Copyright 2010 Booklist
