The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton

“He sensed the seasonal ebb and flow of life in the ground beneath his feet. As Charlie and the oldtimers saw it, the delicate balance on which survival depends creates relationships which are almost sacred in their mysteriousness. Charlie Flagg learns his from the Indians and the early settlers of west Texas who knew that the life producing truces among men and beasts and land are uneasy ones, ones painstakenly formed and perilously preserved, ones easily and disastrously broken by such unpredictable natural events as too much wind or too little rain. Kelton establishes his hero’s dignity and courage in a fascinatingly simple manner: not on the bravado codes of vengeance or the horrifying acts of violence which characterize much of our, so-called, popular western literature, but rather on such elemental values as those which all honest people must struggle to learn from whatever sources they can. Unlike most of his fellow ranchers, he is neither a ward of the government nor a cog in a corporation. At the end of the novel, when the rain finally comes after six years of drought, Charlie emerges much poorer in possessions but with his human dignity entirely intact. Charlie Flagg, the aging, stubbornly independent hero, endures all the personal and environmental hardships which life and nature impose.

Reduced to its basic narrative utterance, The Time It Never Rained is a powerful restatement of the Job story. In The Time It Never Rained, ranchers talk continually about such practical matters as their herds, their crops, and the prospects of rain but beneath such practical matters, Kelton analyzes the ultimate and potential dignity of man when not only survival but humanity itself is at stake.

I deliberately used the term “American” novel rather than “Western” because even though the book deals explicitly with the problems of contemporary west Texas ranchers during a period of prolonged drought, Kelton implicitly raises fundamental issues which probe dramatically beneath the parochial concerns of cowboys. $6.95.) Elmer Kelton’s new novel, The Time It Never Rained, is one of the best American novels of the year.

POULSEN, University of Utah The Time It Never Rained. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ģ30 Western American Literature This sensitive collection penned by a sensitive man should be read with pleasure by historians, folklorists, and critics of literature alike.

The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton