The Maid's Version

A Novel

By: Daniel Woodrell

Narrated by: Brian Troxell

From an American master and author of Winter's Bone, this dark tragedy tells of a deadly dance hall fire and its impact over several generations.

Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident?

Alma thinks she knows the answer—and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, she finally gains some solace—and peace for her sister. He is advised to “Tell it. Go on and tell it”—tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs.

Critic reviews

Editors' Choice, Times Book Review

A Best Book of 2013, Slate

A Best Book of 2013, Washington Post

An NPR 2013 "Great Read"

Winner of the 2014 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction

A Top Five Book of the Year, Kansas City Star

A Best Book of 2013, St. Louis Post Dispatch

Kirkus Reviews selection for the Best Books of 2013

A Best Book of 2013, Capital Times (Madison, Wis.)

An Irish Times Book of the Year

An Irish Mail on Sunday Book of the Year

A Favorite Book of 2013, National Post (Canada)

One of Amazon's Top 10 Best Books of the Month

An Amazon Best Book of the Year

A Best Work of Fiction in 2013, Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"The Maid's Version is one more resplendent trophy on the shelf of an American master."--William Giraldi, The Daily Beast

"The Maid's Version is stunning. Daniel Woodrell writes flowing, cataclysmic prose with the irresistible aura of fate about it."--Sam Shepard

"Further proof, as if we needed it, that Woodrell is a writer to cherish."--Adam Woog, Seattle Times

"Throughout this remarkable book, Woodrell is an unsentimental narrator of an era that is rendered both kinder and infinitely less forgiving than our own."--Ellah Allfrey, NPR Books

"Woodrell captures the run-down, put-upon underbelly of America better than anyone, because he knows it better than anyone."--Benjamin Percy, Esquire.com

"The Maid's Version will sweep readers away."--Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

"A distinctive blend of lush metaphor and brisk storytelling."--Laura Miller, Salon

"In fewer than 200 pages, but with a richness of theme and character worthy of the weightiest Victorian novel, Woodrell brings West Table to life in the varied experiences of its sons and daughters. "--Wendy Smith, Washington Post

"Woodrell's language echoes melodically with the vernacular of the Ozarks, traces of folk song, the cadences of the Bible. Sometimes he offers, seemingly with little effort, as if from a bottomless repository, pithy similes. This of Alma: "grief has chomped on her like wolves do a calf". At other times, sentences leisurely unspool: "The Missouri river floated sixty yards from the street, and there was a small crotchety tavern on the corner." [Woodrell] belongs within a great, predominantly male tradition of American writing that stretches back to Mark Twain and runs on through Willa Cather, William Faulkner, James Dickey, Larry McMurtry to Cormac McCarthy. From the vantage of their willed exile they have produced, down the generations, some of their country's finest fiction and poetry."—Peter Pierce, the Australian

Not what I expected

This author has a great handle on the assembling of words. I'm not sure how else to say it. I can't find fault with the wording. It reminded me of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in the style and set up of the story. That's it because all else fell apart.
The chapters fell into a plausible format. It didn't hold my interest so much that I couldn't put it down, but it kept me thinking about who did it and why, when I wasn't reading it.
If the author had written this a little more directly, we wouldn't have had the wonderful characters and their stories. However Grandma, the important character who tells all at the end, is relegated to snippets dropped into the story instead of being the main character.
In the end I have no idea who really reveals what happened except the author tells us. The ending was satisfactory in that I finally understood what caused the fire. There was no handmaiden to tell the tale.
The plot is great. Who set the fire in the dance hall? It was how the plot formulated afterward that was confusing and meandered through the book. I kept listening, but at times skipped ahead whole chapters. It seems I didn't miss anything important as the ending came and tied the story in a bow.

Confusing, yet interesting

The plot was difficult to follow with the audio, I think it would have been better to read this, the jumping of perspectives made it hard to feel connected to the characters.

Looking for History

My great great GREAT great grandfather was J.Wiser of the West Plains dance hall explosion. Looking for some history or insight and not finding any since I, and many of the women in our family have a deadly genetic mutation. This didn't really provide any info, but was entertaining! Loved the story!

What really happened

I liked this book. A lot. But it’s a challenge to explain why because there were things about it that were hard to like. The writing is outstanding. Woodrell uses economy and eloquence in a narrative filled with secrets, resentment, and sometimes, when least expected, dry dark humor. (His description of the “accidental” demise of a well hated citizen is priceless.) He has written characters vividly without letting us really get to know any of them well. It’s this arm’s length distance that makes it hard to become fully immersed in the story. But looking back I suspect that was the author’s intention. Alma, telling her version of the story, is herself hard to get close to – prickly, resentful, suspicious, and unyielding. Her distance from those she is describing keeps us at that same distance.

Alternating first person narration through Alma and her grandson, we learn from Alma’s memory what lead up to and followed the fire that killed 42 people, including her wayward but beloved sister. No one is ever called to account, and Alma's need for justice solidifies to a hard stone of anger towards those in the small town who are content to just let it go, ostracizing the troublemakers who refuse to do so. The author often switches to third person voice to relay biographical vignettes of other fire victims, and of characters whose roles remain unclear until the end when all the pieces are connected.

These narrative switchbacks caused a bit of auditory whiplash, making me hit the 30 second back-up many times when normal attention to traffic distracted me just enough to miss who was speaking and who was being spoken of. The print version would have made it easy see when a new narrative section was starting - it was not so clear just by listening. I have reluctantly dropped a star from the overall experience because those frequent back-ups took me out of the story just a little too often. But I can also happily give 5 stars to the story for the astounding writing quality and a tale that has stuck with me for the two days since I finished it. This may be a good Audible/Kindle combination for members who use both.

Couldn't Quit Listening!

Loved it! From the begining I had to know what was coming next...every character in this story was brought to life dancing on the edges of every chapter...