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Book Reviewed by:With wisdom and grit, Kenny has fashioned a deeply affecting story of a young woman discovering loss, heartache, and - finally - hope.
As her Wisconsin community endures a long season of drought and feels the shockwaves of World War II, fifteen-year-old Cielle endures a more personal calamity: the unexpected death of her father. On a balmy summer afternoon, she finds him hanging in the barn - the start of a dark secret that threatens her family's livelihood. A war rages elsewhere, while in the deceptive calm of the American heartland, Cielle's family contends with a new reality and fights not to be undone.
A stunning debut, The Driest Season creates a moving portrait of Cielle's struggle to make sense of her father's time on earth, and of her own.
While The Driest Season is not perfect, it manages to be an affecting novel because of how it interprets the grieving process through prose and finds hope and goodness in a world that can all too often appear exhaustingly bleak. Time may not erase, but it does heal. The dry season is just that, a season that will eventually pass...continued
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(Reviewed by Dean Muscat).
Much of The Driest Season revolves around the suicide of Mr. Jacobson and the effect it has on his youngest daughter—and main protagonist—Cielle. As Cielle tries to better understand the reasons why her father took his own life, she discovers that he was secretly seeking help for depression through a counselor, a fact he kept hidden even from his wife because "[h]e was embarrassed he couldn't help himself."
In the 1940s, counseling was only just gaining popularity among everyday Americans, and its benefits in helping all sorts of mental and emotional troubles were still a recent discovery. In fact, until the 1910s, counseling's primary focus was simply to offer guidance to students choosing careers and vocations. While this ...
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Set in a rural community during the 1940s, this novel reminds us that human frailty, loyalty, and the yearning to understand life never goes away. The past was not better or safer. It's where we all once were young.
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