Both of these events hit the farmers hard. Walter is a hard worker and dedicated to making the farm profitable even through the years and challenges of the Great Depression and the Great Drought. It is tempting, but Walter is independent and proud. Wilmer invites the young family to live at his farm. He criticizes Walter for buying a farm when the market price was at its highest. Walter’s father, Wilmer Langdon, is a successful farmer with a 320-acre farm that is bought and paid for. Walter has doubts about whether he’ll be successful at crop growing, dairy farming, and to a lesser extent, raising livestock. Rosanna remains conflicted about religion throughout her life. The couple marries in a Methodist church. There are elements of the Catholic religion that she cannot sanction such as she does not believe that God would punish an innocent baby who was not baptized by damning it to Hell. Rosanna was raised as a Catholic but she thinks independently and is rebellious.

She is a raving beauty of German descent with thick blonde hair, lovely features, and a quick smile. When he returns, he becomes enamored by young Rosanna Vogel. Walter serves in Europe during World War I. As the story unfolds, Walter is twenty-four years old with a wife, Rosanna, and baby, Frank. (Oct.“Some Luck” by Jane Smiley is the story of the Langford family of Iowa. Smiley plans to extend the tale of the Langdon family well into the 21st century she’s off to a very strong start.

The saga of an Iowa farm family might not seem like an exciting premise, but Smiley makes it just that, conjuring a world-time, place, people-and an engaging story that makes readers eager to know what happens next.

The standout is oldest son Frank, born stubborn and with an eye for opportunity, but as Smiley shifts her attention from one character to another, they all come to feel like real and relatable people. Smiley is particularly good at depicting the world from the viewpoint of young children-all five of the Langdons are distinct individuals from their earliest days. The story covers the 1920s through the early ’50s, years during which the family farm survives the Depression and drought, and the five Langdon children grow up and have to decide whether to stay or leave. The warring sisters and abusive father of that book have given way to the Langdons, a loving family whose members, like most people, are exceptional only in their human particularities. In the first volume of a planned trilogy, Smiley returns to the Iowa of her Pulitzer Prize–winning A Thousand Acres, but in a very different vein.

Some luck book