River Be Damned

Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Rosenthal, II, begin their new married life heading west from Pennsylvania to Illinois. Hiram is a kind, well educated banker's son, who successfully establishes a new bank in Grundy County, Illinois. His wife, Irmagarde, is a poor little rich girl, spoiled and pampered from day one. Their only daughter, Elise, bears the brunt of her mother's verbal abuse. As the years pass, Elise's only son, Hiram, III, orphaned by the death of his father in a coal mining accident, grows up to be a well respected farmer whose dream is to own the fertile farm land at the confluence of the Three Rivers. As his dream becomes reality, this novel begins to unfold in the early 1930's during the time of Prohibition. FDR has introduced his New Deal federal work programs to get the United States back on its feet after the Great Depression. The Corps of Engineers is constructing a lock and dam at the point where the DesPlaines River and the Kankakee River join to make the Illinois River. Gustav Lindstrom, a blacksmith, with a reputation for his skilled workmanship, moves his wife and five daughters to Illinois. Their mother, Greta, is strict and religious and their brilliant father imbibes a little too much. The Lindstrom family joins others settling along the Illinois River where the construction and nearby farm families' lives interweave through school and work and love. The settlement is isolated during the winter of 1933 when they become snowbound. A contingent of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps is camped nearby on the Rosenthal farm. The Rosenthal farm boys are Hiram, the gentleman farmer and his three sons; Matt, a good wholesome lad, Reuben, a laid-back dreamer; and Cletus, thebarrel-chested pervert whose warped activities get him into a lot of trouble. Sadie, a sex-crazed gold digger, answers a help-wanted ad and becomes Hiram's hired girl. After two years, Sadie travels to South Dakota with Cletus and Reuben to work the wheat harvest.