Jodie Rattler was born lucky. That's how she's seen herself since she was six when she accompanied her Uncle Drew to a race track and randomly chose horses that won him thousands. He gave her forty-two $2 bills to thank her. For the rest of her life, the rolled-up $86 bundle is her good luck charm.
Maybe it's the rubber-banded stash of money. Maybe it's her clear, cautious approach to life, but Jodie continues to live a charmed life. She eases through high school in St. Louis, her loving but distracted single mother's attention never hampering Jodie's choices.
Wanting to build on the musical talent she discovered in high school, she scopes out East Coast schools in a weeklong drive with Uncle Drew. In a serendipitous wrong turn, she ends up at Penn State.
Jodie loves to walk. On the beautiful Penn State campus, back in St. Louis or in the many cities she explores during her career, song lyrics and tunes flow through her as easily as the blood coursing through her aerobic veins. By the time she graduates, she's already written, performed and sold enough folk/rock hits to set her up for life.
Born in 1949 (like Jane Smiley) Jodie Rattler follows in the wake of the other J-named artists of her time - Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. But rather than galloping ahead with her career, Jodie rides easily, always producing songs, performing when she wants to and never intoxicated by fame.
Her love life is equally well-metered. She values sincerity over passion, even with Martin who would become her one true love -- "when he came back, we did make love, calmly, gently, not passionately, but attentively."
Though none rival Martin, Jodie enjoys a number of pleasant affairs throughout her life. Twenty-three to be exact. She keeps a list. "I enjoyed looking at my list, because very time I did, I could remember each of the 'fuckers' (calling them that made me laugh)."
After an existential crisis at 30, she seems to enjoy easy success through her 50s, navigating the loss of her grandparents, her mother and other family members. Wherever she travels or whatever she's experiencing, songs continue to come to her as easily as breathing. She returns home from a leisurely afternoon walk along the Missouri River, mad to write down the lyrics and play the song that flowed out of her during her walk.
Of the hundreds of songs she composes, she keeps some to herself, shares some with friends and sells one only when an agent or a former band member push her. With Uncle Drew wisely investing her money and backed by her luck-driving $86 bundle, she never wants for money.
It's impossible to separate Jodie's life from her songs. Her lyrics evoke such powerful feelings they imply the music that goes with them, though I'd love to actually hear what her song titled 'You Knew' actually sounds like:
You knew I married you and not the farm
I thought I would lure you back someday
To the busy street where we learned to play
That little game we loved, Let's go, Let's stay.
But when I saw the lively trees
The clouds fluttering in the breeze
When I walk in through the door
Saw the knots in the piney floor
And smelled the billowing wind
I wanted to stay, and never to go.
Reading the story of Jodie's makes you ponder your own life, your choices, your what-ifs, your impact on the world, the things you'd do differently – especially if you are, like Smiley and me, a baby boomer.
"The great enigma, I thought, was the sense you have, that comes and goes, of who you are, what a self is, how it is physical (when you lift your hand up and stare at your fingers, your palm, your wrist, the back of your hand) and internal (when you sift through your memories, jumping back and for between the ones that seem to have happened yesterday, even though they happened decades ago . . .)."
Throughout her life, Jodie encounters a 'gawky girl' from her high school class. We never get her name, but Jodie notices her highly acclaimed books coming out at regular intervals through the years. Finally, after their fiftieth high school reunion, Jodie's able to sit down for a conversation with 'the gawky girl'. The results of that meeting are astonishing, but I will not give that part away.
I'm giving away nothing by noting Jodie's growing awareness of the climate crisis. (I would expect nothing less from Jane Smiley.) After she reads Bill McKibben's 1989 climate book, The End of Nature, Jodie is disappointed in Bill Clinton for not paying attention. "Neither did Hillary."
In the 'Epilogue, 203-', Smiley paints a picture of the world that none of us want to see, one that we know is all too possible. While the entire book has a compelling understated quality, the last line holds nothing back.
"I have outlived everyone I ever knew. If anyone ever reads what I have written here, what I want them to know is that that is not a piece of luck."
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