“They came, says Santos, they tried to beat the jungle, they lost, and they left.
They left some good things.
Tell me one.
They educated my son here. He can speak English…
Let’s hear some.
Flavio – show him…
‘A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H’ —he chants, ‘I’ve got a gal – in Kalamazoo –‘”
It’s rare that I’ll say a book would possibly make a better movie, but I need to see John Sayles’s Crucible (Melville House 2026) on the screen. This sprawling novel, spanning the late 1920s to 1945, is epic in scope with a cast of characters that range from Henry Ford himself to the son of a Brazilian man working a rubber tree farm in the jungle. In addition to Ford’s elite empire, there are maids, baseball players, including the one-armed Pete Gray and the “Hebrew Hammer” -Hank Greenberg, gangsters, politicians, blue collar workers, unionists, journalists, prohibitionists, and so on – the mix of races, socio-economic status, and politics blur together creating a fascinating mural of characters that seems oh so American, and it begs for the screen.
The novel centers around Henry Ford’s empire and its expanding reach, seeing it through a bank collapse, the Great Depression, union struggles, and into WWII. Sayles clues the reader into a time change by inserting Ford adverts, which provide a clue as to the year the reader finds herself in. I enjoyed it, but I can see why some people found the timeline a bit of a blur, and the novel too much.
As far as my favorite characters to follow, it would have to be Kerry, the young girl who goes to join her father in Brazil in Fordlandia, and her mother, a woman with her own secrets and crushed dreams that seem a bit of the light in Brazil.
It’s a good novel, but the revolving door of characters and plots can get a bit murky. I do think it would translate extremely well to screen, and I hope someone buys the rights soon. (Considering the author, it makes sense this reads like it was made for the screen.) If you enjoy historical fiction that claws back the shine and exposes the grit, read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 