A Season of Fire & Ice

Zimpel's second novel (after 1971's Meeting the Bear) uses the Dakota Territories as the venue for the moral reckoning between traditional family ideals and independent capitalist survival. Told mainly via Gerhardt Praeger's journal entries, the novel spans six years (1882-1888) and charts a father's struggles with nature as his seven sons grow increasingly independent. Unwelcome influence comes in the form of Beidermann, a new settler who challenges Praeger's common values; he appears from out of nowhere and possesses, independent of any reliance on God or society, an almost supernatural ability to evade the catastrophes-grasshopper swarms, drought-that lay low the rest of the settlers. The story has the spare drama of parable, with totemic signposts-twin sons, a brooding and amoral outsider, plagues of locusts, a child marked from birth by a port-wine stain-providing a pleasing narrative that pulls the reader into the greater significance of this seemingly simple clan feud.