The midwest might be considered the breadbasket of America, but my sister and I knew midwestern foods from the following categories: vegetables were from a can, and usually casseroled with the help of cream of mushroom soup. Salad would be based on jello not lettuce, and would be sprinkled throughout with marshmallows or mandarin oranges, not peppers or croutons. By late January the snow piles had reached 5 feet and taller and I had a nostalgic hunger for not just banana pudding and Old El Paso tacos, but tales of survival in the midwest when survival meant more than shoveling the front sidewalk.
I'd read My Antonia by Willa Cather in high school and remembered loving it, although the story had faded in my memory. In the last quarter of the 19th century Antonia arrived in Nebraska farmland with her family from Bohemia. Not farmers by trade, they struggled through the first winter, with Antonia easily doing the farm work of any boy her age and aided in English lessons by Virginia transplant Jim, a boy a few years her junior.
A century later Taylor was making her own journey out west in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees. For Taylor, survival meant escaping her native Kentucky without getting pregnant, but when her car breaks down in Oklahoma and she's given a catatonic little girl, she names her Turtle and takes her with her to her ultimate stopping point of Tuscon, acknowledging the irony.
Jim is the narrator in My Antonia, but the women are it's heroines. He admires their strength and beauty-- these are women who have to work to earn a living. For some that means prospecting for gold, opening a successful dress shop or raising a family to work the farm. He defends them the anti-immigrant bias of the day and even years later when he's a successful Harvard trained attorney, is humbled by their success.
To rescue herself, Taylor jumps into motherhood, rescuing Turtle, but also rescues Estevan and Esperanza, immigrant refugees from Latin America and Lou Ann, a woman who becomes her roommate and confidante and needs Taylor as much as Taylor needs her.
Five stars for both books, which satiated my hunger for the midwest while I was holed away in a terrible New England winter...even if I did have to indulge in some 7 layer dip and Snickers salad.
