'Land' offers subtle surprises

Nelson poignantly captures ranch's emotional landscape

Jennie A. Camp, Special To The News

Published August 22, 2003 at midnight

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Soon after Mattie Remmel loses her husband in a tragic farm accident early in Kent Nelson's new novel Land That Moves, Land That Stands Still, Mattie discovers a secret about him that compels her to rethink both her past and her future.

She decides to remain on their South Dakota alfalfa ranch, and she is soon joined by several characters: her daughter Shelley, who comes home from the University of Colorado to help out after the accident; Dawn, a beautiful and quirky drifter who belatedly answers Mattie's husband's ad for a hired farmhand; and Elton, a 14-year-old runaway American Indian boy who initially hides out on the property but soon joins the household to help the women keep up with the chores of a working ranch.

Land That Moves, Land That Stands Still is an impressively sweeping novel about the oh-so-human struggles of life on the bleak plains of rural South Dakota, where the land and daily relationships can prove horribly unforgiving.

Nelson's novel is impressive not only for its dynamic, strong-willed and decidedly disparate key characters, but also because Nelson grew up in Colorado Springs, yet he captures gracefully and poignantly the essence of who these South Dakota women are and who they long to be.

We sense early on that something is doomed for Mattie and her husband Haney, and yet his accident comes as something of a surprise because - except for a thunderstorm - the night, the chores at hand and the accident itself are oddly ordinary.

As the novel continues, Nelson proves himself a master of subtle surprises. The novel reads satisfyingly quickly, in part because situations, much like the landscape, are continually changing, and often in startlingly simple ways.

All three women are searching for something more: Mattie, jarred from a peaceful life by her husband's death and secret life, must come to terms with who she is, who she has been, and - most importantly - who she wants to be.

Shelley has left a tedious but longtime boyfriend in Boulder and embarks on an affair whose passionate urgency startles her and forces her to question what it is she demands of life.

Dawn, whose mechanical abilities are a continual surprise as she successfully tackles such projects as a long-stalled tractor and a questionable irrigation system devised by Mattie's husband, has escaped a violent past that soon returns to haunt her despite her longing for a kind of anonymous and self-reliant peace.

And Elton, of course, is a continual source of wonder with his refusal to speak of his past - which, like Dawn's, returns to haunt him - coupled with a heart that grows unquestionably loyal toward the women who take him in.

True to most successful novels set in the American West, Nelson writes with a powerful sense of place. As the characters grow and move, so, too, does the landscape that surrounds them. When Mattie and Lee Coulter, a museum curator whom Mattie rebuffs gently but continually, head out across the property to check on a runaway fire that may still be smoldering, Nelson allows the night air to foreshadow the change of heart that may be coming in Mattie:

"They walked without the flashlight on, and neither of them spoke. She was conscious of him beside her and felt he was conscious of her, but Mattie sensed no silence. They turned at the weir and walked along the ditch. Water was running in the dark, and the horses moved beside them along the fence. The stars danced over them all."

When Dawn, similarly, begins to discover an unspoken intimacy with Hector, a neighboring farmer, Nelson again allows the hush of nature to suggest the emotions at stake:

"Hector and Dawn drove back from Hot Springs as if everything had been said. The gravel stretched before them, bordered by weeds and fences and fields. The moonlight was true. The pastures with the shadowy hay bales, the dark hills, the river were all true. They passed neighbors they knew and did not know. Dawn clutched a stone in her hand."

The novel's only downfall is a fascination with sex, particularly toward the end of the novel, that feels decidedly male - Nelson's one step outside the admirable intimacy he has found with his three high-powered female protagonists. When Dawn masturbates in the shower, for instance, and we learn that Hector may have been listening, the scene lies precariously outside the story as gratuitous and unnecessary. Shelley's sexual exploits, too, although necessary to a youthful search for self, leave us feeling dirtied and voyeuristic rather than enlightened by some surprising new sense of character.

With four published story collections and three novels, including Language in the Blood, which won the Edward Abbey Prize for Ecofiction, Nelson has discovered a narrative voice in Land That Moves, Land That Stands Still that gracefully melds the landscapes of the contemporary American West with the arcing landscapes of the human heart. His details are true, the emotions are real and the twisting surprises of plot leave us wondering what more this former ranch hand, city judge, tennis pro and university professor might bring us.