Book Review: Winter's Bone | Daniel Woodrell

The title Winter's Bone refers to the relentless cold of the Ozark Mountain region, the chilled skeletons in the closet of a family who are as stretched and hardened as the economic landscape. 
It took me a few chapters to realize this was a contemporary story, meant to be present day and not the depression era like it seemed. 
The book is easy to read and devoid of frill and poetic flourishes.  In a way similar to the main character, Ree Dolly who is curt, hardened and devoid of any flourish yet who is not dark or devoid of desire.  " Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again." She is strong-willed, responsible and puts her desires on hold, or at least until she can join the army, and teaches her younger  brothers how to fend for themselves, cook and shoot squirrels and take care of their mother who's mind has gone long ago and is basically an high-functioning invalid, who floats in and out of sane moments.  Given how women are treated in the story, it seems like the last attempt at escape from her world, and adds a layer of unease to the story.
The dark story revolves around a secret, but not only is the secret deep, but the way it is buried is the darkest of all.  We go with her as she questions her family about her father's whereabouts.  Seems simple enough, but Ree is met with opposisition that violently escalates the closer she gets to finding clues to her dad's whereabouts. He has a bond on him and has to go to jail or else their homestead is put up for sale in a matter of days, putting the mentally ill mother and three kids out in the cold.  " Ree’s grand hope was that these boys would not be dead to wonder by age twelve, dulled to life, empty of kindness, boiling with mean. So many Dolly kids were that way, ruined before they had chin hair, groomed to live outside square law and abide by the remorseless blood-soaked commandments that governed lives outside square law…The rough Dollys were scornful of town law and town ways, clinging to their own" The search gives us a glimpse into the lives of the people, the family dynamic and way of life, including the meth epidemic and violent misogynistic men and the women who are behind them." The Dolly's around here can't be seen to coddle a snitch's family --- that's the always been our way. We're old blood, us people, and our ways was set firm long before hot shot baby Jesus ever even burped milk'n shit yellow.",   There is longing and a bare-bone dryness theme throughout the book described in the icy snow enveloping the mountains, the hunger, the freezing they had to endure, the unsatiated desire she had for her friend, for serenity, " Ree needed often to inject herself with pleasant sounds, stab those sounds past the constant screeching, squalling hubbub regular life raised inside her spirit, poke the soothing sounds past that racket and down deep where her jittering soul paced on a stone slab in a gray room, agitated and endlessly provoked but yearning to hear something that might bring a moment’s rest."
It's amazing to read a contemporay novel about hardship that is from a voice not normally seen.  The market seems to only focus on poverty stricken points of view when it's in an historical context or from a foreigner going after the American dream.  There are a wealth of stories like that right here, right now and though this didn't read as eloquent as other novels I like, it was detailed enough to give me an insightful view of a world I'd never known.