THE WORLD STILL MELTING
By Robley Wilson. Thomas Dunne. 265 pp. $24.95
Robley Wilson has written a novel of remarkable beauty with an astonishing lightness of touch, considering the dark human stories he tells and the bleak truth that lies at the book's core.
Traditional farming in the American heartland has been dying for a long time. Here the decline of a way of life that shaped generations of Iowa farmers affects two couples, Paul and Arlene Tobler and Harvey and Nancy Riker.
The World Still Melting is divided into two sections representing the points of view of each of the two wives, but their stories are not separate. The enduring friendship of these two women saves the book from an ever-impending sense of doom, as Arlene's and Nancy's thoughts and perceptions interweave throughout the story, redeeming the people they love and illuminating the place where they live, despite the horrifying events that occur there. Together they raise the story above its destructive elements, defying the gravity of the human condition with the simple, uplifting strength of human voices.
The Toblers, the Rikers, and Burton Stone, a man whose affair with Nancy causes great trouble, struggle against obstacles that have always confronted farmers: the inevitable burden of debt, the relentless unpredictability of weather, old betrayals by the railroad companies, new treacheries at the hands of the government. This is nothing new in rural life. Paul, Harvey and Burton, however, respond with increasingly desperate acts. A proposed bike trail over an abandoned railroad right-of-way makes Paul resort to arson. Nancy's suspected infidelity provokes Harvey to get the .38 special he uses for gophers and woodchucks and to brandish it among his friends.
This is a tale of loss rippling through lives like wind in a cornfield, rattling one stalk after another, affecting the whole crop. Loss of farm livelihood leads to loss of family structure, as children flee the sad landscapes of their upbringing or are poisoned by growing up with so much hopelessness. Husbands turn abusive, wives unfaithful, sons and daughters unforgiving and estranged. Family behavior becomes as bizarre and unfathomable as the teasing seasonal dance of drought and rain.
Robley Wilson, author of the novel Splendid Omens and the short story collection Terrible Kisses, explores with a deceptive gentleness the human relationships and outlooks that emerge from so much losing. He knows his territory and his people, and he writes about both with a spare, deft prose and an expert ear for dialogue, slipping in an occasional brief description of the Iowa landscape that goes directly to the heart like a love song: "In the fullness of summer, the cottonwood leaves shimmered against the hot winds like silver light on water, and the noise of them seemed endless -- like tides, like a rushing through palpable time."
This landscape is both harsh and comforting for its human inhabitants, and always resonant with their plight. Nancy, living at last with her lover, Burton Stone, observes the redwing blackbirds perched on fence posts by the roadside as she rides by: "Territory. That was all their lives were about: what they could control from their vantage points, the world within the reach of voice. They spread their black wings and opened their beaks to cry off trespassers, every day the same."
For Paul, Harvey and Burton, all that matters is land: inheriting land and being loyal to the legacy, working the land under all conditions and constraints, protecting the land from encroachment, crying off trespassers. The women, though, have a different kind of territory. Arlene and Nancy live in the realm of the present and the personal, in their observations, their letters and their ongoing friendship. Nancy loses almost all she owns, but she still has only one wish: to lie at night with Burton forever, wherever their home may be.
Arlene, after leaving Iowa, writes to Nancy that she has no territory left at all: no man, no land, no family. After losing all of these, she finds to her surprise that she still possesses what she calls "a self-sufficiency." When the rest of life disappears into a melting world, this may be the most valuable thing to keep. •
Reeve Lindbergh has written a number of books for children and adults, and is currently working on a book of nonfiction.
