I was engrossed in this novel from the get-go. The characters are written sublimely. The reader has their favorites, and roots for them, and the ones they think are just losers. In a way, this family reminds me of Ma and Pa Kettle. There are six children, and one grandchild. The two oldest, Ernie and Mary, are the only ones that have a job, so I don't know where the money comes from to feed this gang. The mama is overworked and overwhelmed with taking care of this mob, while the father lays around reading, cuz he can't work"for his rheumatism."

Kenny, a grown-up, good-for-nothing son, spends his nights hanging out with the gangsters from the nearest City, ostensibly Ann Arbor, comes home at dawn, and sleeps all day. In his Mama's eyes, he can do no wrong, so we can figure out why he's like that. He's also a woman-user, preferably married ones, who he drops when he's had his fill of using them. One of the women got so angry with him, she purposely drove into a concrete abutment while they were driving together. Mary and Ernie go to see Kenny the next morning in the hospital. Get a load of the lax rules of hospitals in those days:
"They left the automobile in the parking lot and went in the door of the big hospital together. In the vast cool efficient interior, Ernie was plainly embarrassed and out of place. Mary went to the information desk and stated her name and business directly. The crisp, white - garbed woman behind The desk consulted her cards and looked at Mary curiously while she talked. 'Your brother's condition is not really serious Miss Veech. He was unconscious when he came in here, of course. He has some smashed ribs and a broken collarbone and a bump on his head that we can't be sure about until after the x-rays.' " P.128
"The nurse, hovering in the doorway, smiled slightly at his words. 'Can I have a cigarette?' he asked her. 'Just one, please?' 'I think you might, if you want one,' she said." P.132

A young woman who Kenny used to date, a friend of his sister's, is dying from a brain tumor. His sister convinces him to go say goodbye to her before she dies. But on the way there, Kenny sees his sister Mary going into a bar with her boyfriend. This enrages Kenny, and gives us an idea of what's going on under the surface in this story that has subtly-drawn Dynamics. He goes into a restaurant and quickly downs 5-6 whiskies, further fueling his rage. When he continues on into the hospital, he brutally takes out his rage on the dying girl:
"Kenny turned and propped his arm against the door jamb and laughed magnificently. His voice was slurred and careless, and he chose each word with a calculated cruelty. 'Hell, if you ain't one screwy dame all right. You think I can remember back to them days? Maybe you can; I can't. Hell, it was too long ago and I had too many dames since. What do you think? I can't even remember what it was like, having you....' She winced in the bed, and he struck a posture of elaborate thought. 'Nah, I can't remember. I guess you wasn't nothing special. The only ones I ever remember are the ones I like or the ones that are real hot...'
Fran Cope shut her eyes tight. 'Goodbye, Kenny,' she said, 'Goodbye.' P.214

Josie, one of the twin young women of the Veech family, considers herself to be meant for a better life than the poor one she was born into, and is always aspiring to get invited to places with the upper-class set. She gets invited to a dance at the country-club by a young man who her friend sets her up with. As she is riding to the dance in his car, she dreams of him falling in love with her, marrying her, and giving her the life she's sure she deserves. She has a rude awakening when he tries to put the make on her during the dance:
"Josette sat quite still and let him do it, and felt his fingers, cool and delicate, against the arches of her feet. And, strangely enough, she thought again of Pat Thompson with bitter scorn. Never once in a million years would Pat have thought of sand in her shoes, or cared enough to take them off for her. She felt an unspeakable tenderness for Johnny Meredith. Her thoughts turned into rhetorical theatrical praises. She kept saying to herself over and over, 'This night, This moment must never end. This night is love.' Johnny set up again in the seat and put his arm around Josette and Drew her firm up against him, bent her head back against his shoulder gently with his hand. His words were disjointed peculiarly. 'Poor feet! All tired out after all that dancing. Now you can rest. Just relax and rest here, and shut your eyes, and listen to the waves down there on the beach, and the music... ' P. 178-9

This engrossing story was written by the author when she was 22 years old, and makes this reader marvel at the depth of her knowledge of the human condition, and talent for characterization, setting, and ability to depict life in a small Midwestern town in the depression years, at such a tender age. ( )

This is a great novel by a wonderful writer. It's like the Joad family moved into Peyton Place and they're all doing crack. And it works! Even though this book deals with some pretty heavy subject matter, especially for it's time, somehow throughout it remains a lighthearted and easy read. I will be thinking about this "fambly" for a very long time. ( )

I read about Maritta Wolff's work in an article in The Grand Rapids Press just a few weeks ago. Prior to that I'd never heard of her, which is perhaps not so surprising, considering WHISTLE STOP was first published over seventy years ago. In manuscript form it won the then 22 year-old woman the prestigious Hopwood Award for fiction at the University of Michigan where she was studying. Published in 1941, it was a bestseller and was soon adapted into an equally popular film.

After saying all that, I'm not quite sure what to say about WHISTLE STOP. It's a meanderingly intense look at one large and messy, somewhat amoral and trashy family in a small "whistle stop" village in southeast Michigan, presumably patterned on Grass Lake, the hamlet where Wolff, the product of a rather unconventional liaison, was raised by her grandparents. There are six grown children in the Veech family: Ernie, Mary, Kenny, Josie & Jen (twins), and Carl. (And there's also a particularly nasty and spoiled little grandchild, Mary's "love child," Dorothy, a "bad seed" if there ever was one.) The parents are Sam and Molly, neither of whom seem to work. Sam complains of his chronic "rheumatiz" while overweight Molly indifferently keeps an unkempt ramshackle house and dotes on all her children, but particularly on Kenny, who comes across as kind of a ladies' man "louse" - also unemployed. The family is supported by the two oldest children, Ernie,a bullying foreman of a railroad gang, and Mary, who is the paid "companion" to the owner of the local hotel, who also has some shady underworld connections. In this nearly 400-page potboiler, Wolff gives considerable attention to all of the family members (except maybe the father, Sam, who is seen as completely ineffectual and under Molly's thumb), but the two most fascinating of the bunch are Kenny and Mary, who become central to the meandering plotline and its violent conclusion, which might have been seen as tragic, except, well, the truth is none of these characters are particularly admirable, or even likeable.

But even so, Wolff spins a very compelling story that keeps you turning the pages, throwing in some very apt descriptions of one hot summer in a small dusty Michigan burg just before the Second World War. I can't quite decide why I liked this book as much as I did, given the amoral, lazy and largely unlikeable cast of characters. I guess my fascination with the story is kinda like the way my wife is so caught up in the stories of all those "Real Housewives" on TV these days, all of them trying so hard to "out-awful" each other. It's like watching a human train wreck. Wolff's Veech family in WHISTLE STOP is a lot like that. But Maritta Wolff tells her tale in such a way that it is, no mistake, art. She was a wonderful storyteller and a damn fine writer. Good enough that I may have to find a couple more of her novels and try them on too. A forgotten Michigan writer that should NOT be forgotten, this Maritta Wolff. If you wanna read a really good pulp-fiction type novel, a sort of early PEYTON PLACE, I recommend this book. It may be a 'guilty pleasure,' but it will be, I guarantee, a pleasure. ( )

Wolff's first novel, Whistle Stop, paints a picture of small town life in the United States during the Great Depression. The paint brush slowly reveals the flaws of each individual in the Veech household through an all-seeing and all-knowing storyteller.

There is no question why a special Armed Forces Edition was published for soldiers fighting in World War II: it is an authentic story of civilian life that effectively gave soldiers an escape from their own harsh realities with deception, romance, and murderous plots wrapped into Small Town, USA. The book effectively portrays the social norms and standards of the time with regard to female sensuality and sexuality. It pushes the boundaries between love, sex, money, marriage, family, friendship, and murder. What will become of little Dorothy Veech, in all the chaos? ( )

well written, good read, stars ( )