Wright's Dwelling Places

Nice to be back in Iowa. Wright's Dwelling Places transports the reader to small fictional town in Iowa where families have been economically squeezed out of the farming business. While Mack and Jodie are able to find other jobs, they struggle most in losing a way of life, a way of relating to nature, and a way of relating other people. The story is told through the eyes of four of the five main characters, with perspectives regularly shifting through a common timeframe. The story certainly deals with loss and change, and how family members experience this in different ways and with different results. Of particular interest was how Christianity plays throughout the story: how farmers and foreclosing bankers go to the same church, how the somewhat misplaced prayer of Kenzie speaks powerfully to her father Mack, how the church is able to help the families name what has been lost.

Mack - the loss of the farm led to a depression that landed him in the psychiatric ward and estranges him from his wife and family
Jodie - wife of Mack who also struggles with the loss of the way of life, becomes involved with another man, but eventually accepts Mack back into her life.
Rita - mother of Mack, lives alone but cares for many of her elderly neighbors and friends. Her husband and other son died in trying to keep the farm.
Kenzie - daughter of Mack and Jodie who regularly prays for her family and throws herself into her spirituality and faith. Kenzie finds herself attracted to an older man that seems to share her faith.
Young Taylor - son of Mack and Jodie who seems obsessed with death, closer perhaps to expressing what everyone else is experiencing at the loss of farming.