The Maid's Version

If you are familiar with the movie Winter's Bone, then it's interesting to note that Daniel Woodrell is the author who wrote the book Winter's Bone.  I read that book probably three years ago or more, and was impressed.  There's a mystery in it that is not at all easy to solve.

The Maid's Version is his newest book.  The central tragedy, where a dance hall explodes and kills dozens of people in small town 1920s Missouri, sounds a little fantastical but is based on a true story.  In real life, the explosion occurred in what would become Woodrell's hometown, and the cause of the explosion was never uncovered.  In the book, the relationships between various townspeople slowly emerge, until the ultimate cause of the explosion is revealed in the last sentence or two.

Unfortunately for me, I read this as an ebook that has a lot of extra material at the end.  So I was approaching the end of the story, while the Kindle meter read as 80% completed.  It really messed up the pace of the story for me.  

That's not the book's fault, of course, but I do wish I had known how close I was to the end before I flipped to the next page and saw the author's notes.  The only criticism I have with the book itself is that it sometimes hard for me to tell who was narrating - the story jumps around in time and from character to character.  But the action itself was always clear. 

Final Call:

Some really fine moments in another short read, well worth it.