While I was reading Lloyd Zimpel's new novel, two things that really don't have a direct—but, rather, a peripheral—relationship to it kept popping into my mind over and over again. The first was something I once heard on a Jim Rohn seminar CD. Rohn said, "To anyone who's ever flown over the Great Plains in an airplane and looked down upon them from the skies, the following thought has surely occurred: How did they do it? How did the settlers of this country do it? These people had dreams—big ones." This passage applies to the people of A Season of Fire and Ice, exactly. The second is from the political treatise Straight Shooting, by the philosopher John Silber: "A hundred years ago, the child's confrontation with reality began with the realization of death, which might come through the death of a sibling, a friend, or a parent, aunt, uncle or grandparent, any of which was far more likely then than now to be experienced by the young...Learning about the fact of death is the most shocking contact with reality. Yet, sound education absolutely depends on it because it is the condition on which our full humanity depends." Again, this is applicable to the people in our novel in a big way. In many ways, this tale is about the utilization of basic survival skills; about what it is like to live in a world where the chances of death or catastrophe are pretty high every day; about existing with an awareness of mortality that is front and center in the consciousness in a way that is unimaginable for most people in developed societies today. It's about the devouring roar of a January wind or the all consuming misery of an August drought. It's about what happens when frustration with nature and wilderness crash into emotions like jealousy and rage. How did they do it, indeed?

One of the most interesting things a novelist can do is to create, in the reader, the exact feelings, thoughts, or other mental qualia that the characters within the fiction themselves experience. This is not the same thing as realism; I'm not saying that if a character in a novel is attacked by a bear that a reader should practically feel as though they, too, are being attacked by a bear, no. I mean that a character in a fiction feels a certain emotion, or mental state, and then the reader, because of the act of reading, is made to feel the same emotion or state. Here, Zimpel is able to accomplish this simultaneous emotional stimulation upon both characters and readers in an unusual way: by fracturing the points of view that the story has been told from up to a certain point, by leading both characters and readers along a safe path to a point of relative knowledge and security and then abruptly cutting the strings, shifting the perspective, and even the main focus of the whole narrative, to something else entirely. As I read I thought, 'Wow, what nerve on Zimpel's part.' This is the kind of risk-taking in whiich too few novelists, in my opinion, are willing to engage. I've only seen it attempted with an equal dose of courage in novels by Mario Puzo (Fools Die) and Evan S. Connell (Mrs. Bridge). More on this as we go on, but let's understand, at the outset, that this is a novel requiring great attention to be paid to its form and structure.

The majority of the tale is told through the diaries of one Gerhardt Praeger, a homesteader in the wild Dakota territories of the 1880s. In his journals, he reflects upon the hardships of daily life for himself and his family (his wife and their seven sons). His journals mostly record his and his family's interactions with their new neighbor, Leo Beidermann, who seems to have inhuman levels of luck in settling the land—luck that his neighbors cannot comprehend or appreciate. Praeger's journal entries alternate with short, omniscient chapters that see the world as Beidermann sees it. The story's development is relatively simple to outline: Beidermann does extremely well with the development of his land and Praeger and his family do not. Eventually, a disaster takes place and one of the Praegers accuses Beidermann of being responsible. Tempers flare. More disaster ensues, this time man-made rather than natural.

Beidermann has success after success, just as the Praeger family and others seem to have failure after failure. The two youngest Praeger boys, twins who remain unnamed throughout ( the other five being Otto, August, Cornelius, Henry and Harris), become close to Beidermann and are constantly helping him with various projects on his land. Two women figure prominently—Ma Praeger and the widow Jenssen, whose husband died on Praeger's land two years hence. The plot is uncomplicated, the events familiar. Hardship on the frontier has got to be one of the most frequently told of all American stories, and in Zimpel's telling we're not exactly getting "Little House on the Prairie". A critical plot point is organized around a plague of locusts. The tidal wave of destructive insects completely overwhelms Praeger's land, property, and animals while—miraculously, but typically—not touching Beidermann's at all. Just before the plague, there is a long dry spell with no rain that cracks the one thing Praeger has been steadfast in: his faith. He questions why some seem to be being dealt a shorter hand than others. The plague of locusts brings the tension and resentment between some of the Praegers and Beidermann to a head. Confrontation can no longer be avoided.

It should be noted, though, that the old man Praeger, himself, disapproves of the actions taken; he states, in deciding to turn the other cheek at a stressful moment of decision, that this is what a Christian man must do. And that brings up a point that's important about the sort of Christianity he adopts as a world view.

At one stage in the drama, before the eruption of the feud, Beidermann says "God damn this heat!" Praeger's instructive response is, since God is the one who brought it about, he's not likely to damn it. This seems like a comparatively uncomplicated remark, but a few moments of reflection show it is actually a profound metaphysical belief: we can say of absolutely anything whatsoever that, if God created it, it's not likely he'll condemn it. It's all God's work—the pulverizing snowstorms, the stultifying droughts, the locusts, the deaths of children (the Praeger's only girl died in infancy) and of spouses (Swede Jenssen)—God did it all, therefore there must be some kind of method behind the madness; this is absolutely, without question, what Praeger believes.

That he is unable to communicate or transfer this level of conviction to his family is evident in myriad ways. At one point, the eldest son wonders aloud, to his father's face, if he has not been a fool to hang on this long, to not simply leave. Another of the sons, symbolically ornamented with a distinctive birthmark, embarks on courses of action his father would never even imagine. The twins can barely contain their elation over Beidermann. Ma tells a story about an ancestor from the distant past who had healing powers, a story that evokes beliefs which are in many ways opposed to Praeger's strict Christianity, and it's quite clear that she believes them.

In a moment, I would like to return to the matter of point of view and, as a part of that, how Praeger's journals are constructed. Before that, though, it's appropriate to comment upon the level and the intensity of the violence contained within the story.

Nowadays, when we talk about violence in the culture, we basically mean spousal killings, murders, gangland horrors, drug-related homicide, perhaps things like Columbine and racial tensions (things which, ironically, Zimpel took up in his first novel, Meeting The Bear.) This is of a different kind than the survivalist violence that is everywhere in A Season of Fire and Ice. Within the first few pages, there's a description of a method of skinning an animal that will make your spine tingle. Shortly therafter, there is a description of the beating of a dog that bit an ox; a few pages after that, a description of settlers who kill themselves in drunken despair over the way their lives are going on the plains; of men accidentally mutilating themselves with axes, of teams of horses being dragged over cliffs when trying to pull loads that are too heavy for them; and much more. The harshness of life, in all its physicality and vividness, is observed both by Praeger (with a stoic resignation) and by Beidermann (with an agitated nervous cynicism—his persona, in fact, is reflected by his two vicious, snarling dogs) as being the way life simply is. For us, as modern readers, this is jarring. It is jarring, firstly, that these things were a part of everyday life and it is jarring, secondly, that these men have these reactions to it. Quite an experience to ponder!

I remarked earlier on the novel's shocking, unexpected veering in its latter stages. Every review I have read about it mentions this, and states that it really can't be discussed that much, lest reading pleasure be cut into. I agree. What we can do, though, is examine why the movement is so effective. Praeger's diary entries form the majority of the book and, from them, we get a brilliant inner glimpse into the mind and soul of a man who is in what I would call a permanent condition of constructive discontent. He wrestles with everything—both in the outer world around him and in the psychological world within. It's amazing how Zimpel can fuel the narrative for over a hundred pages, mostly using the diary, and confine the action to basically the Praegers and Beidermann on their land; the story really begins to open up with a long diary entry about the 4th of July celebration in the town, where we finally see some interaction with the outside world. In reading the journals something occurred to me, which is that there are often big gaps in the dates. Does this mean that there are entries we don't see...or do we see all that there is? Either possibility is fascinating. Equally fascinating is the number of entries that begin with an observation about the day's weather, showing just how important it was to the settlers' lives. We warm up to Praeger after a while, and his calm wisdom becomes like an old friend. In contrast, Beidermann's parts are told in a more colloquial, cocky prose which we come to expect and respect, as well. Thus, when Zimpel makes his move in the final third or so of the book, it's not unlike being given a cute puppy for two weeks and then waking up one morning to find it gone. Wrenching. And challenging!

There's a lot to seek out here. In addition to some of the things we've touched on there is rich, sophisticated symbolism of all kinds; the texture and cadence of the pose at times moves towards the beautiful; and, upon a second and third reading, the care with which the author sets up and prepares for scenes in episodes that have come before becomes more apparent and more appreciable. This novel is a big achievement, and one that reminds us of how great fiction can instruct us in how to understand our world a little better.

Lloyd Zimpel was kind enough to take a few questions:

ZIMPEL: My objective was immediacy—haul the 1880s to the front straight-away, with first person present; but this also limited Praeger to little beyond his personal ken, thus the need for a third person view—the eye of God keeping track.

Praeger's journals were almost wholly invented, two or three incidents coming from reading. The overall feeling for the time came from reading many journals, letters home, diaries, memoirs. I read not as research but because of curiosity about my Dakota Territory forebears.

Praeger has the most to talk about. Also, he is well-read, with the necessary vocabulary, and, indeed, with seven sons to do the work, he has time and energy, plus awareness of a journal-writing tradition, to tackle it. Beidermann, younger, is less read, facing more work, and couldn't have known the ins-and-outs of Praeger's family, which are necessary.


QUINONES: Could a person with Praeger's general outlook on life exist today? By that I mean the ideals that he embodies—hard work, deep faith, so-called family values. As I read, the thought kept coming to me: how much hardship these people had to endure simply in terms of survival skills, dealing with nature and unsettled land! To what degree would you say Praeger's philosophy is bound up with that?


ZIMPEL: It seems unlikely under similar circumstances. He was probably rare, even then. The qualities you mention were leached out of most men by the hard times. But there was a little of each in a lot of men. I gave Praeger some of all, having thought of him originally (and, indeed, Beidermann) as larger than life. However, both evolve—or devolve—into humans like the rest of us.

I doubt many thought of themselves as skilled—it was all just work, although persuading a recalcitrant mule to take a bit needed skill—but, mostly, it was muscle, as I found out as a kid trying to throw a 1000 lb. harness onto one of my uncle's team.

Praeger is a Bible-reading man, taking his direction from on high, that direction covering, as you note, work, faith, family. Like many others, he comes from the Old Country, not for adventure or riches (California, Colorado, or Nevada gold!) but to settle in with like-minded fellows to do exactly what he did back home—but with better soil to work with, a chance to make a better living for his family, and to be left alone, politically. He has a little more learning, perhaps a bit more insight, but otherwise he is pretty much the same as any of the old boys who managed to hang on. The circumstances shaped these men, of course, and not always in the same way.


QUINONES: On your publisher's Web site, I read the story of John and the horses from your childhood. How much of the novel is driven or inspired by your own personal experience? And could you expand upon that for us to include not only your own novel but fiction in general, as a whole, as you see it?


ZIMPEL: Most of the detail, minutiae—though not the story, itself—comes from personal experience as an 8- and 9-year old from a small town, sentenced to summers on my grandmother's remnant of a farm (in Minnesota) run by a bachelor son, the last of her eight children, during the depths of the Great Depression. With no more money now than 50 years earlier, my Grandmother had simply brought her "skills" from the Dakota '80s to the Minnesota '30s—made soap, raised next year's flock of fryers by setting eggs under brooding hens, smoked ham from butchered hogs, washed clothes, even her Mother Hubbards, by hand with a washboard, canned hundreds of quarts of vegetables and fruits, cooked and baked on a huge wood-burning kitchen "range", water from a well, no electricity: when FDR's Rural Electricity Program finally came through in the late '30's, the first use of it, by my uncle, was to pump water to the cattle. It finally dawned on me, decades later, after reading journals, histories, etc., what my grandmother had accomplished and that I had been, in effect, introduced to a part of '80s Dakota while threading her needles or watching her measure bluing into the huge cooper pot vat for Monday washings. If I am pressed to visualize any one remembered person appearing in the book, it would be another uncle who raised a family in northern Minnesota, on a rugged farm, some buildings made of logs, and half in a dark woods where his cattle ran and deer hunters got lost every fall. He had a sly wit and was full of long-winded tales, and some of this could conceivably be attributed to Praeger.

As for the influences of personal experience, how do you avoid it, unless you are an immaculate visionary receiving messages from on high? I suspect bits and pieces of yesterday's conversations, talk overheard, some oddities in last week's weather, etc., appear in most everything writers put out.

QUINONES: Your first novel, Meeting The Bear, was published 30 years ago, and deals with a very different time, place, and set of circumstances; yet, I sense a certain consistency of theme at work. Is that accurate? In your experience, what's more difficult, writing fiction that deals with contemporary times or the with the past (more than a century ago, in this case)? What are the specific challenges of each?

ZIMPEL: Well, the idea for both books did slosh around in the same brain pan for awhile, and both came from this typewriter. Thirty-five years ago, I was talking about raw politics (though some thought it was race). Today, it is raw (and human) nature. Both can be destructive, surely, but it's for someone with more critical acumen than me to sort it out.

For me, writing about the here and now is easier, and what the world seems to embrace; witness the outpouring of contemporary novels and stories from the writing schools—mea culpa. I start reading a lot of that stuff but don't finish. Unless it's something by one of our modern masters—and note how many root their work in past traditions—McCarthy, Proulx, McGuane, Harrison, Roth.

The challenge is always to discover the character, the situation, the point in time that resonates insistently. Surely, it can happen any time, any place. Now, for me, the time and place is the Midwest of the 1800s, but, of course, I'm getting old.