She looked at Walter, who was so far away from her, all the way at the other end of the table, having a laugh with Andrea, who had a beautiful suit on, navy blue with a tiny waist and white collar and cuffs. “She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of the silverware, the fragrances of the good hanging over the table, the heads turning this way and that, the voices murmuring and laughing. This essence is shared when Rosanna pauses for just a moment during a Thanksgiving meal: Some Luck gave me some insight into the lives and challenges of my grandparents, both of whom came of age during the Depression, and it comes about as close as any novel I’ve ever read at capturing the essence-in all of its beauty and brokenness-of a nuclear family. Each chapter of Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as soldiers like Walter return from the World War, begin a family, struggle to survive the Great Depression, and then send their children off to the Second World War. Some Luck is the first novel in a trilogy about an Iowa farm family-Rosanna and Walter Langdon from the fictional town of Denby, Iowa. Jane Smiley’s most recent work, Some Luck, should be required reading for every American literature class in our state. One of those writers is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Jane Smiley. From Flannery O’Connor to John Irving, Walter Stegner to Robert Bly, North American culture has been the beneficiary of some of the most creative writers ever to have put pen to paper. The Workshop has been home to some of the most important writers of the last seventy-five years. The Iowa Writer’s Workshop was founded on the campus of the University of Iowa in the middle of the Great Depression. Iowa has corn but, if we stop there, we’d miss a fact about which many Iowans are unaware that is, Iowa hosts arguably the most important incubator for literary culture in the country-the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. New York has Broadway, not to mention the art, literary and fashion scene, and California has Hollywood. Wisconsin has well, Wisconsin has beer, brats, and the Green Bay Packers. Minnesota has Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion.

Some luck by jane smiley