Following the Harvest

As a native Oklahoman I enjoy reading fiction revolving around the Sooner state. Although I am too young to remember much about Mr. Harris' U.S. Senate career, I have known about him from an early age as my father was an acquaintance. So I had a keen interest in reading this book when I learned of it's availability in the local rag. I actually didn't expect too much from it figuring it would be a quick and light read with an emphasis on history, topography, and the finer points of agricultural reproduction. But after a slow start that establishes the background of the characters the story really moves along in a satisfying manner as the harvest crew continues their sojourn up the great American plains. Many memorable stops are made along the way and new characters enter and exit as well. I will probably remember young Will Haley's encounter with an old Lakota medicine man at the base of Mount Rushmore as the highlight of the tale. Wonderfully mystic. Harris' more liberal tendencies do pop up in the book... not that there's anything wrong with that. All in all a fun and gratifying read filled with humor, wisdom, and... the finer points of agricultural reproduction.

Oklahoma native Fred Harris, a former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate, is a professor at the Univ. of New Mexico and a prolific writer who is gaining a national reputation on the literary scene. He has written or edited 16 nonfiction books and two novels. I have not read his political tomes of nonfiction but have read his two previous novels, the first of which won the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award. I can confidently say this is the best of his novels to date. Harris is a really good writer and getting better. Tony Hillerman has described Harris' writing efforts as "a helluva job," and he is being compared to Willa Cather and Larry McMurtry. This latest effort features a 16-year-old named Will Haley and a collection of characters including his father, two cousins from Mississippi, his father's best friend, a hump-backed hired hand, and a wimpy truck driver with a pretty wife. Haley and his family live in Vernon, a small town in southwestern Oklahoma which is suspiciously like Walters, Okla., birthplace of Harris and the location of the first two novels. The book opens in "near summer" in 1943 with Haley preparing to embark on a trip following the wheat harvest north through western Oklahoma, Nebraska, and culminating in Rhame, N.D. In what has become Harris' trademark style of combining a cast of believable characters with realistic dialogue and memorable descriptions of events and places, the reader is treated to a wonderful story of hardship, humor, friendship, maturity, sex and tragedy that is both unforgettable and a pleasure to read. Who will forget the visit to a house of ill repute or the unexpected participation in the Frontier Days rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyo.? What is Haley to do about his father's drinking problem or his cousin's more-than-casual overtures to the truck driver's wife? Why would the military police come looking for a member of the group who had claimed he was honorably discharged? Combined with these dilemmas are prairie fires, constant battles with the equipment, and the ever-present fear of tornadoes and other weather problems, real and imagined, that all contribute to what Haley originally viewed as being his "moveable adventure." The book is a real page-turner. The unexpected death of a crew member forces Haley and others to make changes in their plans and brings maturity beyond their years. Fred Harris has the ability to tell a story that is colorful, believable, realistic and highly readable. His novels are rooted in a geographical region of the country, the Southwest, that he knows well. But even more than the familiar regional settings is his ability to write about a heartland with characters recognizable to all: people who have survived adversity and remain decent, hardworking and fallible inhabitants of an area that has a history of producing such individuals regularly. Not only are his geographical descriptions true and familiar, but so are his characters. As with his other works, you will swear you either k