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Summary
Summary
In the Nebraska Sandhills, nothing is more sacred than the bond of family and land--and nothing is more capable of causing deep wounds. In Pamela Carter Joern's riveting novel The Floor of the Sky , Toby Jenkins, an aging widow, is on the verge of losing her family's ranch when her granddaughter Lila--a city girl, sixteen and pregnant--shows up for the summer. While facing painful decisions about her future, Lila uncovers festering secrets about her grandmother's past--discoveries that spur Toby to reconsider the ambiguous ties she holds to her embittered sister Gertie, her loyal ranch hand George, her not-so-sympathetic daughter Nola Jean, and ultimately, herself. Propelled by stark realism in breakneck prose, The Floor of the Sky reveals the inner worlds of characters isolated by geography and habit. Set against the sweeping changes in rural America--from the onslaught of corporate agribusiness to the pressures exerted by superstores on small towns--Joern's compelling story bears witness to the fortitude and hard-won wisdom of people whose lives have been forged by devotion to the land.
Author Notes
Pamela Carter Joern is a widely published author whose work has appeared in South Dakota Review , Red Rock Review , Feminist Studies , and Minnesota Monthly . She is also the author of five professionally produced plays, the winner of a Tamarack Award in 2001, and the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board writing fellowship.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Toby Jenkins, now 72, has been living all her life in the same ornate Sears, Roebuck farmhouse in the Nebraska Sandhills her father bought for her mother back in 1920. For now, Toby aims to stay there with her cranky self-righteous sister, Gertie, despite the local weasel banker's pressure to sell. Toby is widowed, resolute and land-scarred; a string of family deaths, tragedies and abandonments have left Toby and Gertie with no one to pass the place on to. Then Toby's 16-year-old pregnant granddaughter, Lila, arrives from Minneapolis. At first the unloved, metal-studded Lila, the child of Toby's adoptive daughter, a bitter airline stewardess, is surly and ungrateful, but eventually her curiosity about country rituals and her grandmother's life leads her to the family cemetery and to archives harboring long-buried family secrets. Playwright Joern's characters are as stern as the land, and the world of her debut novel is sturdy and memorable. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Joern intricately weaves together a compelling family saga and a beautifully rendered paean to the land her characters love and are struggling to preserve. Rooted in the Nebraska Sandhills, Toby, an aging widow, lives with her older sister in the house their parents built before the Depression. Toby invites Lila, her pregnant 16-year-old granddaughter, to stay with them until her baby is born, in part to assuage the long-standing rift between Toby and Lila's mother. While sifting through her feelings about her pregnancy, impending motherhood, and adoption, Lila simultaneously begins digging into family secrets, including the death of Toby's first love in an accident caused by her father and the son Toby gave up for adoption months later. Surrounding the intertwined details of this family's loves, jealousies, and regrets like a cocoon is their emotional bond with the land itself--the land they're in danger of losing to a ranching conglomerate. Joern's lyrical and painterly descriptions of the vast Sandhills are the perfect backdrop for this subtle drama. --Deborah Donovan Copyright 2006 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A small-scale but emotionally rich first novel about an unwed pregnant teen spending the summer with her grandmother in the hardscrabble Nebraska Sandhills. Lila's flight-attendant mother sends Lila from Minneapolis to her grandmother Toby's Nebraska farm to wait out the last months of her unwanted pregnancy. While Lila struggles with her pregnancy and her decision to put her unborn baby up for adoption, her visit stirs up long-simmering tensions for Toby, Toby's bitter sister Gertie and George, who has worked on the farm for more than 50 years. Seventy-two and long widowed, Toby is no fawning grandma. Tough but loving, she still rides her horse regularly and can work up a man's passions. It soon comes to light that although he never acted on his feelings, Gertie's husband, now suffering from Alzheimer's, was quietly in love with Toby for most of his marriage . . . not exactly a recipe for good sibling relations. Also in love with Toby long, long ago was George's younger brother, David. When Toby was Lila's age, she and David tried to run away together. Her father chased them in his car, shot and killed David, then crashed the car, accidentally killing his wife. Toby bore David's child, who was cared for by distant relatives until he died at 12 of leukemia. Since then, George has secretly acted as Toby's guardian angel, even through her happy marriage and the adoption of Lila's mother. His unspoken love makes for irresistible reading. Despite Lila's small romances and dramas, her story never rises to the dramatic or romantic energy of these oldsters (think Paul Newman with Joanne Woodward). Toward the end, the plot wobbles as the author recognizes, but only partially deflates, the clich inherent in having a mortgage-holder show up, threatening to sell the farm out from under Toby. A resonant love story, whatever the age of the lovers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Lila is a pregnant teenager spending the summer at her grandmother Toby's Nebraska ranch. Toby is trying to save her ranch from foreclosure while dealing with her sanctimonious older sister Gertie, whose Alzheimer's-afflicted husband has been put into a nursing home. The events of the summer bring out long-buried family secrets, with every member facing significant challenges before achieving resolution. First novelist Joern is particularly skilled at depicting contemporary small-town life and the issues rural communities face: the difficulty small farmers and ranchers have staying afloat financially and the decision of younger generations either to leave for urban areas or to endure directionless lives. She packs a lot of story into 250 pages, though except for the names of four generations of an extended family, the book doesn't feel crowded. Essential for rural and regional public libraries.-Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
