Author: Kali VanBaale

Publisher: MG Press, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-944850-02-9

Author: Kali VanBaale

Publisher: MG Press, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-944850-02-9

Two old women living in a farmhouse begin the story which sways forth and back bovinely between the early 1960s and early 1950s in rural Wisconsin. Jean is the principal character throughout, observing her lot in life, more than she expected, less than she wanted. Her opportunity had come in the form of the hardworking but dull brother of the lively man she loved. She married Jim, had kids, and did everything she was supposed to do as a good farm wife. She was loved. Accomplished. And managed to keep her secrets.

This is a novel set in my place in my time. Though I did not live on a farm, I have seen enough of them to realize country life wasn’t (in those days) all fresh harvest. The hours are long, the environment more mud than carpet. On even successful farms, the fragrance of rosebushes could not mask the pervasive rank of lumbering animals. In the1950s, to bring in outsiders who went to college and wore fancy clothes was cruel.

Although the theme of a farm wife yearning for more is not new – I think even of Wisconsin Death Trip, a collection of professional photographs matched to newspaper clips from 1890s Wisconsin – the language of this author is particularly evocative in its details: the usual potluck table starring potato salad in a cut glass bowl that is treasured; the efficiency of a new milking machine; recollection of the death of an elderly aunt by wasp’s nest; later finding her button under the refrigerator; the scandalous meaning of birth control pills, not that there would be sex but that there would be no children.

I liked especially this image and the sound of it: “Tommy and the woman hooked index fingers, like two fishing lures tangled in a tackle box.”

Finally, there is a reminder that farm families do not forget. They may have secrets, but it is a rare person who yearns; most just wake up in the morning and meet their obligations, sometimes with grudges, but mostly with stubbornness.

In my reading of The Good Divide , the beginning, which is the ending, is the part that resonates with me and tells all. The cows come home.

About the Author (From Amazon.com)

Kali VanBaale’s debut novel, The Space Between earned an American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s silver medal for general fiction, and the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award. She is also the recipient of a State of Iowa Arts Council major project artist grant. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Milo Review, Northwind Literary, The Writer and several anthologies. Kali earned an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been an assistant professor and Visiting Writer at Drake University. She lives outside Des Moines with her husband and three children.