House of Earth: A Novel

Featuring the song, ""House of Earth"" performed by Lucinda Williams.

Finished in 1947 and lost to readers until now, House of Earth is Woody Guthrie's only fully realized novel, a powerful portrait of dust bowl America. It is the story of an ordinary couple's dreams of a better life and their search for love and meaning in a corrupt world.

Tike and Ella May Hamlin struggle to plant roots in the arid land of the Texas Panhandle. Living in a wooden shack, Tike yearns for a sturdy house that will protect them from the treacherous elements. He has the know-how to build a structure made from the land itself-a house of earth. Though they are one with the farm and with each other, the land on which Tike and Ella May live and work is not theirs. Thanks to larger forces, their adobe house remains painfully out of reach. House of Earth is a searing portrait of hardship and hope set against a ravaged landscape, a powerful tale of America from one of our greatest artists.

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House of Earth: A Novel

Featuring the song, ""House of Earth"" performed by Lucinda Williams.

Finished in 1947 and lost to readers until now, House of Earth is Woody Guthrie's only fully realized novel, a powerful portrait of dust bowl America. It is the story of an ordinary couple's dreams of a better life and their search for love and meaning in a corrupt world.

Tike and Ella May Hamlin struggle to plant roots in the arid land of the Texas Panhandle. Living in a wooden shack, Tike yearns for a sturdy house that will protect them from the treacherous elements. He has the know-how to build a structure made from the land itself-a house of earth. Though they are one with the farm and with each other, the land on which Tike and Ella May live and work is not theirs. Thanks to larger forces, their adobe house remains painfully out of reach. House of Earth is a searing portrait of hardship and hope set against a ravaged landscape, a powerful tale of America from one of our greatest artists.

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House of Earth: A Novel

House of Earth: A Novel

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House of Earth: A Novel

House of Earth: A Novel

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Overview

Featuring the song, ""House of Earth"" performed by Lucinda Williams.

Finished in 1947 and lost to readers until now, House of Earth is Woody Guthrie's only fully realized novel, a powerful portrait of dust bowl America. It is the story of an ordinary couple's dreams of a better life and their search for love and meaning in a corrupt world.

Tike and Ella May Hamlin struggle to plant roots in the arid land of the Texas Panhandle. Living in a wooden shack, Tike yearns for a sturdy house that will protect them from the treacherous elements. He has the know-how to build a structure made from the land itself-a house of earth. Though they are one with the farm and with each other, the land on which Tike and Ella May live and work is not theirs. Thanks to larger forces, their adobe house remains painfully out of reach. House of Earth is a searing portrait of hardship and hope set against a ravaged landscape, a powerful tale of America from one of our greatest artists.


Editorial Reviews

MARCH 2013 - AudioFile

Famed American singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie wrote a powerful portrait of Dust Bowl-era Texas in 1947. Recently discovered, the novel was published on the centennial anniversary of Guthrie's birth. Douglas Brinkley performs the novel's lengthy introduction, cowritten and edited by Johnny Depp. The material provides historical context for both The Great Depression and Guthrie himself, who was "living his art" by championing the dignity of the downtrodden. Narrator Will Patton enlivens the novel with a vernacular twang and a range of expression that makes Guthrie’s characters fully believable. In the arid Texas Panhandle, a young couple struggles to build an adobe home on a plot of leased land. Agribusiness and banks foil their endeavors. Patton provides a good flow to the vivid descriptions of rural realism and progressive activism, peppered with sexually explicit passages. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

Guthrie’s multifaceted legacy lives on (and combines beautifully with his affecting 1930 autobiography Bound for Glory) with this posthumous Texas plains novel set during the Dust Bowl era. The story is prefaced in a long-winded introduction by Brinkley, a media historian, and Depp, who polished the rough manuscript. Spearheading this tale of woe is Tike and Ella May Hamlin, a hardworking farmer and his pregnant wife, both subsisting in a rickety shack on land prized by a sharecropper. Tike dreams of building an adobe home to circumvent the use of pricey lumber and avoid the bank. The couple’s interactions, including graphic, extended erotic scenes, form the crux of a highly resonant, symbolic novel rife with themes of nature’s wrath, the misery of poverty, and the proletarian’s struggle against the churning machines of commerce. With dialogue rich in “hillbilly” vernacular and a story steeped in folk traditions, Guthrie’s drought-burdened, dust-blown landscape swirls with life. The book is finely supplemented with a biographical time line, companion discography, and artwork licensed by the Woody Guthrie Archives. His heritage as folksinger, artist, and observer of West Texas strife lives on through these distinct pages infused with the author’s wit, personality, and dedication to Americana. (Feb. 5)

From the Publisher

Powerful…Happily, many good things happened, and the book is finally with us.” — Larry McMurtry, New York Review of Books

“Its voice is powerful, and to read it is to find kinship with an era whose angers and credulities still seem timely…There is a surprising electricity in House of Earth.” — USA Today

“The style of House of Earth is strange and lyrical…House of Earth becomes an invaluable addition to the literature of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, one with an eerie relevance in today’s America.” — Dallas Morning News

“Guthrie demonstrates an easy facility with language and the words of the people of the Great Plains. The opening lines strike a note of simple poetry…House of Earth will certainly be essential reading for Woody Guthrie fans.” — Christian Science Monitor

House of Earth is an artifact, of course, but so is any buried treasure…House of Earth is well constructed, like a good song or house should be, but it’s also a bit flawed and unruly, exactly the way American literature has always been.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

“What a combo! Johnny Depp and Woody Guthrie…This belongs on a shelf alongside Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,…” — New York Post

House of Earth is so alive it is hard to realize that its author has been gone for 45 years….Stark, original, brutal in spots, lyrical in others, often very funny.” — Times (London)

“A heartfelt story about grinding poverty …This novel, more than a curiosity, is both welcome and timely.” — Daily Telegraph (London)

“The book is an eccentric hymn to the everythingness of everything, a sort of hillbilly Finnegans Wake…it offers intimate, often startling access to the peculiar intellect and capacious soul of a 20th-century icon.” — Guardian

“With Guthrie’s ear for language and eye for human passions, House of Earth is an engaging and poetic story about struggle that still rings true today. Its revival is welcome.” — Independent on Sunday

“Guthrie’s straight forward depiction of his raw rural characters are reminiscent of not any of his fellow Americans so much as they are of Mikhail Sholokhov. The folksy, incantatory exuberance is all Guthrie…An entertainment — and an achievement even more than a curiosity, yet another facet of Guthrie’s multiplex talents.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Almost more a prose poem than a novel, this is an impassioned tirade against agribusiness and capitalism. Like Guthrie’s songs, the novel presents concerns of the Everyman…readers who appreciate Jon Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell, as well as fans of Guthrie’s music, will want to reach for this folksy novel.” — Library Journal

“With dialogue riche in ‘hillbilly’ vernacular and a story steeped in folk traditions, Guthrie’s drought-burdened, dust-blown landscape swirls with life…His heritage as folksinger, artist, and observer of West Texas strife lives on through these distinct pages infused with the author’s wit, personality, and dedication to Americana.” — Publishers Weekly

“Told in the unmistakable vernacular of Woody, at once earthy and erudite, House of Earth is less a novel than an extended prose poem interrupted by healthy smatterings of folksy dialogue.” — Shelf Awareness

Dallas Morning News

The style of House of Earth is strange and lyrical…House of Earth becomes an invaluable addition to the literature of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, one with an eerie relevance in today’s America.

Christian Science Monitor

Guthrie demonstrates an easy facility with language and the words of the people of the Great Plains. The opening lines strike a note of simple poetry…House of Earth will certainly be essential reading for Woody Guthrie fans.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

House of Earth is an artifact, of course, but so is any buried treasure…House of Earth is well constructed, like a good song or house should be, but it’s also a bit flawed and unruly, exactly the way American literature has always been.

New York Post

What a combo! Johnny Depp and Woody Guthrie…This belongs on a shelf alongside Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,…

Times (London)

House of Earth is so alive it is hard to realize that its author has been gone for 45 years….Stark, original, brutal in spots, lyrical in others, often very funny.

Daily Telegraph (London)

A heartfelt story about grinding poverty …This novel, more than a curiosity, is both welcome and timely.

USA Today

Its voice is powerful, and to read it is to find kinship with an era whose angers and credulities still seem timely…There is a surprising electricity in House of Earth.

Independent on Sunday

With Guthrie’s ear for language and eye for human passions, House of Earth is an engaging and poetic story about struggle that still rings true today. Its revival is welcome.

Larry McMurtry

Powerful…Happily, many good things happened, and the book is finally with us.

Guardian

The book is an eccentric hymn to the everythingness of everything, a sort of hillbilly Finnegans Wake…it offers intimate, often startling access to the peculiar intellect and capacious soul of a 20th-century icon.

Shelf Awareness

Told in the unmistakable vernacular of Woody, at once earthy and erudite, House of Earth is less a novel than an extended prose poem interrupted by healthy smatterings of folksy dialogue.

USA Today

Its voice is powerful, and to read it is to find kinship with an era whose angers and credulities still seem timely…There is a surprising electricity in House of Earth.

New York Post

What a combo! Johnny Depp and Woody Guthrie…This belongs on a shelf alongside Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath,…

Time Magazines (London)

"House of Earth is so alive it is hard to realize that its author has been gone for 45 years….Stark, original, brutal in spots, lyrical in others, often very funny."

Library Journal

Guthrie (1912–67), America’s iconic folksinger, completed a novel in 1947 that languished on a Hollywood shelf for decades, now published for the first time. Edited and introduced by its editors, historian Douglas Brinkley and actor Johnny Depp, this is a paean to Dustbowl farmers and the concept of adobe-brick house building. Incantatory in style, the novel is filled with dialog between husband and wife Tike and Ella May Hamlin as they struggle to make a go of tenant farming in the Texas Panhandle. Tike dreams of buying some acreage and building an adobe house. The wooden shack they live in is under constant invasion from dust and termites. Though the couple lack for money, their love is strong, and their lovemaking frequent, depicted with earthy gusto. When Ella May gets pregnant, their need to create a better life becomes paramount.

Verdict Almost more a prose poem than a novel, this is an impassioned tirade against agribusiness and capitalism. Much like Guthrie’s songs, the novel presents many concerns of the Everyman. Although some may see this as a literary artifact, readers who appreciate John Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell, as well as fans of Guthrie’s music, will want to reach for this folksy novel. [This is the inaugural title in Depp’s Infinitum Nihil imprint.—Ed.]—Keddy Ann Outlaw, Houston, TX

(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

MARCH 2013 - AudioFile

Famed American singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie wrote a powerful portrait of Dust Bowl-era Texas in 1947. Recently discovered, the novel was published on the centennial anniversary of Guthrie's birth. Douglas Brinkley performs the novel's lengthy introduction, cowritten and edited by Johnny Depp. The material provides historical context for both The Great Depression and Guthrie himself, who was "living his art" by championing the dignity of the downtrodden. Narrator Will Patton enlivens the novel with a vernacular twang and a range of expression that makes Guthrie’s characters fully believable. In the arid Texas Panhandle, a young couple struggles to build an adobe home on a plot of leased land. Agribusiness and banks foil their endeavors. Patton provides a good flow to the vivid descriptions of rural realism and progressive activism, peppered with sexually explicit passages. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

Radical American folk singer Guthrie, gone 45 years now, turns in an accomplished if somewhat symbol-dense piece of fiction. Edited, at least to an extent, by prolific historian Douglas Brinkley and movie star and boho-lit fixture Johnny Depp, Guthrie's foray into prose (not his first: his 1943 Bound for Glory remains an iconic autobiography) is set on the Texas plains in the howling, unsettled Dust Bowl era. The new civilization of banks, deeds and lawyers is represented by wood, which is scarce out in that wind-blasted, dry country; adobe, sun-dried mud brick is the virtuous stuff of the people, themselves wind-blasted and creaky with aridity but stiff-necked and disinclined to bow down. The metaphor figures, in countless permutations, throughout Guthrie's novel, as it evidently did in letters of various confidants, including one from Woody to actor Eddie Albert (yes, of Green Acres fame) in which he writes excitedly, "Local lumber yards dont advertize mud and straw because you cant find a spot on earth without it, but you see old adobe brick houses almost everywhere that are as old as Hitlers tricks, and still standing, like the Jews." That nicely enigmatic statement stands up alongside other motifs, including Guthrie's apparent approval of large women who could give birth to a whole new human race. Written in the shadow of Steinbeck, Guthrie's novel layers on social realism without propagandizing overmuch; his straightforward depiction of his raw rural characters are reminiscent not of any of his fellow Americans so much as they are of Mikhail Sholokhov. The folksy, incantatory exuberance is all Guthrie, however: "I'm glad to see you! I'm just about th' gladdest that any man ever was to ever see any womern! Whew! Come in! Blow in! Watch out there! Your clothes are blowin' plumb off!" An entertainment--and an achievement even more than a curiosity, yet another facet of Guthrie's multiplex talents.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940170240371
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 02/27/2013
Edition description: Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

House of Earth

A Novel


By Woody Guthrie

HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright © 2013 Woody Guthrie
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-224839-8


Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

DRY ROSIN


The wind of the upper flat plains sung a high lonesome song down across the blades of the dry iron grass. Loose things moved in the wind but the dust lay close to the ground.

It was a clear day. A blue sky. A few puffy, white-looking thunderclouds dragged their shadows like dark sheets across the flat Cap Rock country. The Cap Rock is that big high, crooked cliff of limestone, sand-rock, marble, and flint that divides the lower west Texas plains from the upper north panhandle plains. The canyons, dry wash rivers, sandy creek beds, ditches, and gullies that joined up with the Cap Rock cliff form the graveyard of past Indian civilizations, flying and testing grounds of herds of leather-winged bats, drying grounds of monster- size bones and teeth, roosting, nesting, and the breeding place of the bald-headed big brown eagle. Dens of rattlesnakes, lizards, scorpions, spiders, jackrabbit, cottontail, ants, horny butterfly, horned toad, and stinging winds and seasons. These things all were born of the Cap Rock cliff and it was alive and moving with all these and with the mummy skeletons of early settlers of all colors. A world close to the sun, closer to the wind, the cloudbursts, floods, gumbo muds, the dry and dusty things that lose their footing in this world, and blow, and roll, jump wire fences, like the tumbleweed, and take their last earthly leap in the north wind out and down, off the upper north plains, and down onto the sandier cotton plains that commence to take shape west of Clarendon.

A world of big stone twelve room houses, ten room wood houses, and a world of shack houses. There are more of the saggy, rotting shack houses than of the nicer wood houses, and the shack houses all look to the larger houses and curse out at them, howl, cry, and ask questions about the rot, the filth, the hurt, the misery, the decay of land and of families. All kinds of fights break out between the smaller houses, the shacks, and the larger houses. And this goes for the town where the houses lean around on one another, and for the farms and ranch lands where the wind sports high, wide, and handsome, and the houses lay far apart. All down across this the wind blows. And the people work hard when the wind blows, and they fight even harder when the wind blows, and this is the canyon womb, the stickery bed, the flat pallet on the floor of the earth where the wind its own self was born.

The rocky lands around the Cap Rock cliff are mostly worn slick from suicide things blowing over it. The cliff itself, canyons that run into it, are banks of clay and layers of sand, deposits of gravel and flint rocks, sandstone, volcanic mixtures of dried-out lavas, and in some places the cliff wears a wig of nice iron grass that lures some buffalo, antelope, or beef steer out for a little bit, then slips out from underfoot, and sends more flesh and blood to the flies and the buzzards, more hot meals down the cliff to the white fangs of the coyote, the lobo, the opossum, coon, and skunk.

Old Grandpa Hamlin dug a cellar for his woman to keep her from the weather and the men. He dug it one half of one mile from the rim of Cap Rock cliff. He loved Della as much as he loved his land. He raised five of his boys and girls in the dugout. They built a yellow six- room house a few yards from the cellar. Four more children came in this yellow six room house, and he took all of his children several trips down along the cliff rim, and pointed to the sky and said to them, "Them same two old eagles flyin' an' circlin' yonder, they was circlin' there on th' mornin' that I commenced to dig my dugout, an' no matter what hits you, kids, or no matter what happens to you, don't git hurried, don't git worried, 'cause the same two eagles will see us all come an' see us all go."

And Grandma Della Hamlin told them, "Get a hold of a piece of earth for yerself. Get a hold of it like this. And then fight. Fight to hold on to it like this. Wood rots. Wood decays. This ain't th' country to get a hold of nothin' made out of wood in. This ain't th' country of trees. This ain't even a country fer brush, ner even fer bushes. In this streak of th' land here you can't fight much to hold on to what's wood, 'cause th' wind an' th' sun, an' th' weather here's just too awful hard on wood. You can't fight your best unless you got your two feet on th' earth, an' fightin' fer what's made out of th' earth." And walking along the road that ran from the Cap Rock back to the home place, she would tell them, "My worst pain's always been we didn't raise up a house of earth 'stead of a house of wood. Our old dugout it was earth and it's outlived a hundred wood houses."

Still, the children one by one got married and moved apart. Grandma and Grandpa Hamlin could stand on the front porch of their old home place and see seven houses of their sons and daughters. Two had left the plains. One son moved to California to grow walnuts. A daughter moved to Joplin to live with a lead and zinc miner. Rocking back and forth in her chair on the porch, Della would say, "Hurts me, soul an' body, to look out acrost here an' see of my kinds a- livin' in those old wood houses." And Pa would smoke his pipe and watch the sun go down and say, "Don't fret so much about 'em, Del, they just take th' easy way. Cain't see thirty years ahead of their noses."

Tike Hamlin's real name was Arthur Hamlin. Della and Pa had called him Little Tyke on the day that he was born, and he had been Tike Hamlin ever since. The brand of Arthur was frozen into a long icicle and melted into the sun, gone and forgotten, and not even his own papa and mama thought of Arthur except when some kind of legal papers had to be signed or something like that.

Tike was the only one of the whole Hamlin tribe that was not born up on top of the Cap Rock. There was a little oblong two- room shack down in a washout canyon where his mama had planted several sprigs of wild yellow plum bushes near the doorstep. She dug up the plum roots and chewed on them for snuff sticks, and she used the chewed sticks to brush her teeth. The shack fell down so bad that she got afraid of snakes, lizards, flies, bugs, gnats, and howling coyotes, and argued her husband into building a five room house on six hundred and forty acres of new wheat land just one mile due north, on a straight line, from the old Pa Hamlin dugout.

Tike was a medium man, medium wise and medium ignorant, wise in the lessons taught by fighting the weather and working the land, wise in the tricks of the men, women, animals, and all of the other things of nature, wise to guess a blizzard, a rainstorm, dry spell, the quick change of the hard wind, wise as to how to make friends, and how to fight enemies. Ignorant as to the things of the schools. He was a wiry, hard-hitting, hardworking sort of a man. There was no extra fat around his belly because he burned it up faster than it could grow there. He was five feet and eight inches tall, square built, but slouchy in his actions, hard of muscle, solid of bone and lungs, but with a good wide streak of laziness somewhere in him. He was of the smiling, friendly, easygoing, good-humored brand, but used his same smile to fool if he hated you, and grinned his same little grin even when he got the best or the worst end of a fistfight. As a young boy, Tike had all kinds of fights over all matters and torn off all kinds of clothes and come home with all kinds of cuts and bruises. But now he was in this thirty-third year, and a married man; his wife, Ella May, had taught him not to fight and tear up five dollars' worth of clothes unless he had a ten dollar reason.

His hard work came over him by spells and his lazy dreaming came over him to cure his tired muscles. He was a dreaming man with a dreaming land around him, and a man of ideas and of visions as big, as many, as wild, and as orderly as the stars of the big dark night around him. His hands were large, knotty, and big boned, skin like leather, and the signs of his thirty-three years of salty sweat were carved in his wrinkles and veins. His hands were scarred, covered with old gashes, the calluses, cuts, burns, blisters that come from winning and losing and carrying a heavy load.

Ella May was thirty-three years old, the same age as Tike. She was small, solid of wind and limb, solid on her two feet, and a fast worker. She was a woman to move and to move fast and to always be on the move. Her black hair dropped down below her shoulders and her skin was the color of windburn. She woke Tike up out of his dreams two or three times a day and scolded him to keep moving. She seemed to be made out of the same stuff that movement itself is made of. She was energy going somewhere to work. Power going through the world for her purpose.

Her two hands hurt and ached and moved with a nervous pain when there was no work to be done.

Tike ran back from the mailbox waving a brown envelope n the wind. " 'S come! Come! Looky! Hey! Elly Mayyy!" He skidded his shoe soles on the hard ground as he ran up into the yard. "Lady!"

The ground around the house was worn down smooth, packed hard from footprints, packed still harder from the rains, and packed still harder from the soapy wash water that had been thrown out from tubs and buckets. A soapy coat of whitish wax was on top of the dirt in the yard, and it had soaked down several inches into the earth at some spots. The strong smell of acids and lyes came up to meet Ella May's nose as she carried two heavy empty twenty gallon cream cans across the yard.

"Peeewwweee." She frowned up toward the sun, then across the cream cans at Tike, then back at the house.

"Stinking old hole."

"Look." Tike put the envelope into her hand. "Won't be stinky long."

"Why? What's going to change it so quick all at once?

Hmmm?" She looked down at the letter. "Hmmmm. United States Department of Agriculture. Mmmmm. Come on.

We've got four more cream cans to carry from the windmill. I've been washing them out."

"Look inside." He followed her to the mill and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Inside."

"Grab yourself two cream cans, big boy."

"Look at th' letter."

"I'm not going to stop my work to read no letter from nobody, especially from no old Department of Agriculture. Besides, my hands are all wet. Get those two cans there and help me to put them over on that old bench close to the kitchen window."

"Kitchen window? We ain't even got no kitchen." Tike caught hold of the handles of two of the cans and carried them along at her side. "Kitchen. Bull shit."

"I make out like it's my kitchen." She bent down at the shoulders under the weight of the cans. "Close as we'll ever get to one, anyhow." A little sigh of tired sadness was in her voice. Her words died down and the only sound was that of their shoe soles against the hard earth, and over all a cry that is always in these winds. "Whewww."

"Heavy? Lady?" He smiled along at her side and kept his eye on the letter in her apron pocket.

The wind was stiff enough to lift her dress up above her knees.

"You quit that looking at me, Mister Man."

"Ha, ha."

"You can see that I've got my hands full of these old cream cans. I can't help it. I can't pull it down."

"Free show. Free show," Tike sang out to the whole world as the wind showed him the nakedness of her thighs.

"You mean old thing, you."

"Hey, cows. Horses. Pugs. Piggeeee. Free show. Hey."

"Mean. Ornery."

"Hyeeah, Shep. Hyeah, Ring. Chick, chick, chick, chick, chickeeee. Kitty, kitty, kitty, meeeooowww. Meeeooowww. Blow, Mister Wind! I married me a wife, and she don't even want me to see her legs! Blow!" He dug his right elbow into her left breast.

"Tike."

"Blowww!" "Tike! Stop. Silly. Nitwit."

"Blowwww!" He rattled his two cans as he lifted them up onto the bench. In order to be polite, he reached to take hers and to set them up for her, but she steered out of his reach.

"You're downright vulgar. You're filthy minded. You're just about the meanest, orneriest, no-accountest one man that I ever could pick out to marry! Looking at me that a -away. Teasing me. That's just what you are. An old mean teaser. Quit that! I'll set my own cans on the bench." She lifted her cans.

"Lady." The devil of hell was in his grin.

"Don't. Don't you try to lady me." Her face changed from a half smile into a deep and tender hurt, a hurt that was older, and a hurt that was bigger than her own self. "This whole house here is just like that old rotten fell-down bench there. That old screen it's going to just dry up and blow to smithereens one of these days."
(Continues...)


Excerpted from House of Earth by Woody Guthrie. Copyright © 2013 by Woody Guthrie. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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