Being Esther

From a masterful storyteller, comes a Midwestern epic that illuminates the majestic in the commonplace.

When David Rhodes burst onto the American literary scene in the 1970s, he was hailed as a brilliant visionary (John Gardner), and compared to Sherwood Anderson and Marilynne Robinson. In Driftless, his most accomplished work yet (Joseph Kanon), Rhodes brought Words, WI, to life in a way that resonated with readers across the country. Now with Jewelweed, this beloved author returns to the same out-of-the-way hamlet and introduces a cast of characters who all find themselves charged with overcoming the burdens left by the past, sometimes with the help of peach preserves or pie.

After serving time for a dubious conviction, Blake Bookchester is paroled and returns home. The story of Blake’s hometown is one of challenge, change, and redemption, of outsiders and of limitations, and simultaneously one of supernatural happenings and of great love. Each of Rhodes’s characters–flawed, deeply human, and ultimately universal–approach the future with a combination of hope and trepidation, increasingly mindful of the importance of community to their individual lives. Rich with a sense of empathy and wonder, Jewelweed offers a vision in which the ordinary becomes mythical.