Holed Up -- With Old Ace

I think I have spent too much time in the West, between Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and now Texas. Annie Proulx' book, That Old Ace in the Hole, is only 359 pages long but it took me months to plow through it. By the time I made it to the last 60 pages or so, the devise of its pace came through to me as essential to where Annie wants to end up: how long Bob Dollar has to be exposed to a place to make it his own.

Bob leaves Denver to work for a company looking to site hog farms in the Texas panhandle. Some are there already, befouling the land and affecting the health of downwind residents. Bob lies about why he has come to Woolybucket and ingratiates himself with the townsfolk, who only incrementally reveal themselves to him, particularly through their idiosyncrasies: quilting bees, barbwire festival, windmill construction lore. It is by these vignettes that the reader and Bob come to understand what makes this place vital despite its remoteness and economic depression.

Here the characters are hardscrabble and tenacious like those from the Dust Bowl rather than opportunists like the population of Tombstone. Those who are manipulators, excepting Bob who is portrayed more as a naif, are revenged by the community.

Proulx writing style does not dazzle nor does her plot line controvert. It is a slow, steady story that depicts a place as unique, permanently marking its residents, and essentially Texan.