This novel is actually two books. The first details a culture that was passed through several generations in this nation. The second, starting with WWII, shows how changes-social, cultural, and technological caused it to virtually disappear. Some of that was good and some not.
These pages cover a century, but focus on the years 1931 to 1966, a tumultuous time in our history. The tale stretches from Depression dollar-a-day wages to prosperity and TV. Throw in three wars. It is the history of a community of uncommon, common people that has seldom been told. They were sometimes flawed and funny, but their courage, traditions, and wisdom made a marked difference in our world. When the author has questioned those who lived during those times, he has heard tales of disapointment. They have traveled back to the places they knew and find those people and the places they loved gone. He wants to take them home again.
To later generations, he introduces a world they know little of. It was a place of unlocked doors, 5 cent ice cream cones, the Dow at 75, family farms without electricity, plumbing, or running water, and a continuity of culture and family. The author lived in such places--watching and listening, like the doves.
The characters and families are a varied lot whose lives often take unpredictable courses. They faced the Great Depression, drought, murder, suicides, rape, war, racial and religeous prejudice, and economic upheaval they were not prepared for. The era played out differently for the many characters depending on their social, ethnic, and familial status.
Hessie Starbuck, the heart and soul of a county and small town, listened to their triumphs and sorrows and befriended them---and the doves watched over them all. Hessie had a secret.
If a reader needs a break from the 21st century, a little feel-good might be refreshing--mixed in with the conflicts and travails of the characters lives. The author would like readers to get to know and love these people he created the way he does. This is his hymn to those people and the society that raised him and gave him his values.
