And what a beautifully crafted little gut-punch of a book this is.........
An irresistible plot: In 1951 North Dakota, an elderly couple, George and Margaret Blackledge, still grieve over the accidental death of their son, thrown from a horse. The son left behind a young wife, Lorna and little Jimmy, George and Margaret's beloved 4 year old grandson.
But their daughter-in-law, a weak-willed airhead, quickly found a new husband in the worthless, abusive Donnie Weboy........and Donnie's taken his new wife and stepson to live with his fierce, fearsome Weboy family clan in the Montana badlands.
Mean-spirited and violent, the Weboys are straight out of a horror movie.........but force-of-nature Margaret, with a weary, wary George in tow, travels to Montana in the wild hope of somehow retrieving and rescuing her only grandson from the clutches of this dangerous collection of creeps.
The vile, vengeful Weboys, true to their nature, make George and Margaret suffer dearly for their quest........but between these two polar opposite families, the flawed but loving Blackledges and the evil Weboys, , there's a final reckoning still to come......
And that's as far as I go with the plot (way more than I usually give out in a book review).......except to say that story's conclusion will shatter you in all sorts of ways......
Watson's prose manages to be both spare, incisive and luminous.......and you'll never find a more painful, humorous and truer portrait of a lifelong marriage in his creation of George and Margaret Blackledge. (Finish the book and you'll see why Costner and Lane leaped at a chance to film it....)
BQ can only pray the film comes close to equaling the book........regardless, put it on your summer reading list right now. 5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS. And beware those Weboys........
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