Early warning

Format:

Book (large print)

Title:

Early warning

Author:

Smiley, Jane.

ISBN:

9781410478924

Edition:

Large print edition.

Publication:

Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, 2015.

Physical Description:

811 pages (large print) ; 23 cm.

Number in series:

BK. 2

Summary:

In 1953, the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, who with his wife, Rosanna, sustained their farm for three decades, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. Only one will remain in Iowa to work the land, while the others scatter to Washington, D.C., California, and everywhere in between. As the country moves out of post-World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and '70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth -- for some -- of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world. And they now have children of their own: twin boys who are best friends and vicious rivals; a girl whose rebellious spirit takes her to the notorious Peoples Temple in San Francisco; and a golden boy who drops out of college to fight in Vietnam -- leaving behind a secret legacy that will send shock waves through the Langdon family into the next generation.

Subject(s):

Rural families -- Iowa -- Fiction.

Social change -- United States -- History -- 20th century -- Fiction.

Large type books.

Family life -- Fiction.

Farms -- Fiction.

Farmers -- Fiction.

Twins -- Fiction.

Best friends -- Fiction.

Friendship -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	Smiley, J.	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

It's 1953. Stalwart patriarch Walter Langdon, who with his wife sustained their Iowa farm for three decades, has died, leaving five children looking to the future. One remains to work the land while the others scatter east, west, and in between. Capturing an indelible period in America through the richly drawn characters we come to know and love, this is a beautifully told story of the challenges and rich rewards of family and home, even in the most turbulent of times.

Author Notes

Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles, California on September 26, 1949. She received a B. A. from Vassar College in 1971 and an M.F.A. and a Ph.D from the University of Iowa. From 1981 to 1996, she taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops at Iowa State University. Her books include The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, Moo, Horse Heaven, Ordinary Love and Good Will, Some Luck, and Early Warning. In 1985, she won an O. Henry Award for her short story Lily, which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. A Thousand Acres received both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Smiley has a big cast to wrangle in the second volume of the Last Hundred Years trilogy, which began with 2014's Some Luck, and she starts this entry at the funeral of Walter, the Iowa farmer and paterfamilias of volume one. While the Langdons, scattered across New York, Chicago, and California, reunite, readers get a refresher on the family relationships. Covering 1953 to 1986 at a clip of one year per chapter, the focus here is the Cold War and its fallout. This material occasionally feels like the greatest hits of the post-WWII era, with Langdons brushing up against a Kennedy assassination, Jonestown, and Vietnam. And since the post-war baby boom means cousins by the dozens, the cast of characters isn't as vivid and particular as it was in the knock-out first volume. Still, Smiley keeps you reading; as a writer she is less concerned about individual characters, but still as deft as ever at conveying the ways in which a family develops: some stories carrying on, while others fall away. This isn't a series you can start in the middle, so pick up Some Luck, ride out the Depression and WWII with Walter, Rosanna, and Frank, then come back to the atom-and-adultery-haunted volume two. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

Opening with the 1953 funeral of patriarch Walter, Smiley follows the Langdon family introduced in Some Luck (2014, etc.) through its second and third generations.Only steady second son Joe stayed home on the Iowa farm; he watches the land soar in value during the 1970s, though the farmer fatalism he inherited from Walter is justified when crop prices tank in the '80s. Brilliant, predatory older brother Frank rises through the Manhattan business world while wife Andy raises their kids on automatic pilot, devoting her principal energies to psychoanalysis and worrying about nuclear war. Lillian has the happiest marriage among the siblings, though husband Arthur's employment at the CIA provokes several crises of conscience. Observing them all in her customary critical spirit, widowed Rosanna cautiously expands her horizons, learning to drive and paying a visit to youngest son Henry, a gay academic, in Chicago. His sister Claire finally dumps her husband in 1979, after years of never talking back. "He had failed to pass the test," she judges, "not daring to recognize that all was changed." Smiley's narrative web snares almost every major postwar social change, and inevitably there are some generic touches: One member of the third generation is killed in Vietnam, another gets involved with Jim Jones' Peoples Temple. Such boilerplate is generally redeemed with nicely specific details, as when Andy imagines the impending nuclear apocalypse to be something like the Ragnark envisioned by her Norse forebears. Each of the large cast of characters has sharply individualized traits, and though we're seldom emotionally wrapped up in their experiencesSmiley has never been the warmest of writersthey are unfailingly interesting. The surprise 1986 appearance of a hitherto unsuspected relative prompts a semiconfrontation between Arthur and resentful daughter Debbie that reminds us life and love are never perfectthey simply are. Sags a bit, as trilogy middle sections often do, but strong storytelling and a judicious number of loose ends will keep most readers looking forward to the promised third volume. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Smiley continues the multigenerational, cross-country saga of the Iowa-rooted Langdon family she began in Some Luck (2014). As before, each chapter covers a year, this time from 1953 to 1986, and once again Smiley adeptly meshes diverse personal experiences with landmark events and seismic shifts in social consciousness. First-born Frank, a darkly glamorous former WWII sniper with an eidetic memory, glides into the upper echelons of the booming postwar weapons and oil industries while continuing to assist Arthur, his profoundly tormented CIA operative brother-in-law, in covert operations. Frank's wife fears the atomic bomb, lies to her psychoanalysts, and drinks too much, while their daughter is drawn into Reverend Jim Jones' Peoples Temple, and their twin sons practice a violent form of sibling rivalry. Arthur and Lillian's son serves in Vietnam; Frank's professor brother carefully embraces his taboo sexuality; sister Claire endures a smothering marriage; and the matriarch, Rosanna, turns startlingly adventurous. With penetrating looks at the military, the dawn of rock and roll, the Kennedy and King assassinations, Watergate, and the farm crisis, Smiley demonstrates an incisive historical perspective, virtuosic omniscient narration, free-flowing empathy, and a gift for sparring dialogue. Every scene is saturated with sensuous and emotional detail as Smiley consummately articulates the micro and the macro, the comedic and the tragic in this grand story of an iconic American family. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Some Luck was beloved by critics and readers alike, ensuring an enthusiastic reception for the second novel in Smiley's extraordinary Last Hundred Years trilogy as the author tours the country.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

EMBATTLED REBEL: Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Civil War, by James M. McPherson. (Penguin, $17.) Putting aside his own professed sympathies with the Union side, the author examines the Confederate leader, who is often portrayed as the static foil to Abraham Lincoln. In McPherson's telling, Davis emerges as a leader deeply involved in the Confederate military strategy and fiercely committed to the secessionist cause. THE EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF THE FAKIR WHO GOT TRAPPED IN AN IKEA WARDROBE, by Romain Puértolas. Translated by Sam Taylor. (Vintage, $17.) An Indian con man arrives in Paris with a fake 100-euro note and one goal: to purchase Ikea's newest bed of nails. Puértolas's wry novel, a postcolonial sendup of immigration and commerce, follows the fakir on his journey across Europe and from sly trickster to compassionate global citizen. A LIFE OF BARBARA STANWYCK: Steel-True 1907-1940, by Victoria Wilson. (Simon & Schuster, $22.) Long admired for her profound emotional expression and comfort across a range of genres, Stanwyck is a star who has defied easy categorization. This is the first volume in Wilson's sensitive exploration of the actress's life, spanning her childhood and early forays as a performer. As our reviewer, Molly Haskell, said, it's "the book to bring her to center stage." EARLY WARNING, by Jane Smiley. (Anchor, $16.) Readers last met the Langdons, the Iowa farming family at the center of Smiley's multigenerational trilogy, in "Some Luck." Now it's 1953, and the family has gathered to mourn their patriarch, Walter. This middle volume spans the societal shifts and changes of 20th-century America as the family comes up against turbulent times that encompass the Vietnam War and Jim Jones's Peoples Temple. WHERE THE DEAD PAUSE, AND THE JAPANESE SAY GOODBYE: A Journey, by Marie Mutsuki Mockett. (Norton, $16.95.) Grief has been woven into Mockett's life for generations: Her family has survived violent episodes in Japan's past, including the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. In the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami, the event around which this memoir is shaped, Mockett traveled to her family's Buddhist temple in Japan and gained insight into her own sorrows while immersed in the nation's grief. THE SAME SKY, by Amanda Eyre Ward. (Ballantine, $15.) Ward's novel brings together two incomplete families. After a stretch of failed adoption attempts, Alice and her husband have abandoned hope of welcoming a child into their family. Meanwhile, 11-year-old Carla has decided to make the journey from her dangerous Honduras home to America in pursuit of her mother, who left when Carla was younger. SHRINKS: The Untold Story of Psychiatry, by Jeffrey A. Lieberman with Ogi Ogas. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $16.99.) Sensing a disconnect between the public's mistrust of psychiatry and the field's genuine virtues, Lieberman sets out to debunk the myths that have mischaracterized his medical specialty for years.

Library Journal Review

Convening in 1953 for father and grandfather Walter's funeral, the Iowa Langdon family notes another recent passing-Joseph Stalin. The Cold War escalates; weapons and the fortunes of Walter's descendants (mostly) proliferate. Marriages and careers disperse the clan nationwide to reckon with the likes of McGeorge Bundy and Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple. This immersive chapter per year (through 1986) saga showcases Smiley's gift for empathetic characterization. Her spot-on rendering of children's viewpoints presages their formidable potential-another reason for readers to anticipate the trilogy's concluding volume. Adults frequently channel the tribe's agricultural roots, pondering nature vs. nurture and genetics-breeding, like the future, being fraught with risk. Sputnik, Vietnam, and grain embargoes induce life-altering consequences, but so do chance encounters, parenting miscues, and one's choice of roommate. Diverse and engaging, the Langdons continue to fascinate; this cohesive presentation owes much to Lorelei King's adept handling of a sweeping narrative and complex cast. VERDICT A necessary purchase for fiction collections, this title (and the prerequisite Some Luck) will charm literary and historical fiction fans. ["While Smiley's latest offering is not as captivating as the first installment, readers interested in a story well told will be satisfied": LJ 4/1/15 review of the Knopf hc.]-Linda Sappenfield, Round Rock P.L., TX © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.