Summary
Narrated in the past tense by an unnamed third-person limited-omniscient narrator, Winter’s Bone opens with sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly, the novel’s protagonist, standing on her front steps. She lives with her family in an old house in the Missouri Ozarks, a hilly highland region of the United States.
Ree smells coming snow flurries in the air and laments how the onset of winter will make life more difficult. Her father walked out one day and has been gone for some time, and he didn’t leave enough wood to keep their potbelly stove full, so she’ll have to split wood. Her brother Harold comes out and asks Ree if they should ask their neighbor to give them some of the deer meat he is hanging from trees. Ree says, “Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
Inside, their mother sits by the stove. Her morning medication makes her docile and sleepy, like a cat. She used to be beautiful and charming before “her mind broke.” Ree feeds her mother and younger brothers, Sonny and Harold. She shouts at the boys to hurry to get ready for the bus to pick them up. Sonny complains that his socks stink but Ree insists he wear them. Ree hopes her brothers won’t go the way of so many Dolly men, who are raised to live “outside square law” as criminals. Two hundred Dollys live within thirty miles of their valley, and they are fierce against enemies, particularly anyone associated with law enforcement and the towns. When the boys throw fits about having to eat oatmeal for dinner instead of meat, she worries their blood-thirsty Dolly heritage is emerging.
Ree chops firewood in the falling snow. She takes a break, pulling out headphones to listen to a tape of The Sounds of Tranquil Shores. The tape, along with others, was given to her mother, but Ree uses them to “inject herself with pleasant sounds.” A police car drives up with the boys in the back. Ree shouts at the officer, Baskin, but he says he brought them from the bus stop because the school is closed due to snow. He explains that he was on his way over anyway and asks to speak with her mother.
When he sees the state of Ree’s mother, the officer steps outside to talk with Ree instead. He explains that her father Jessup’s latest trial for cooking “crank” (i.e. the illegal drug methamphetamine) is coming up, and Jessup signed over their house and land as part of his bond agreement. Baskin hasn’t been able to find him anywhere, and if he isn’t in court next week, the Dollys will lose their home. Ree takes in the unwelcome news and insists she will track down her father.
That evening, Ree’s brothers have come down with colds. Their neighbor Sonya arrives with a box of venison, canned food, and butter. Sonya ponders aloud why the law was looking for Jessup if the trial is set for next week, letting her question hang in the air unanswered. Ree unpacks the food, which fills the kitchen with welcome smells. She sees four days' worth of survival. The boys rush over to unpack the box. She shouts at them to pull up chairs and watch carefully to learn how to make deer stew.
Ree starts her inquiries with Uncle Teardrop, who lives three miles down the creek. His girlfriend, Victoria, answers and offers Ree coffee. Ree sees a pistol in a nut bowl, casually laid out next to big bags of crank and pot. Teardrop comes into the room, having overheard Ree talking, and warns her not to go looking for her father. He says it’s a man’s choice whether or not to show up in court. Ree’s uncle is named for the three teardrop tattoos under his eye, which he earned committing three murders inside prison. One of his ears is melted off from a crank cooking accident.
Ree suggests she could ask around for him in Hawkfall. Teardrop reacts violently, pulling Ree’s hair before kissing her forehead. He takes the bag of crank to another room, beckoning Victoria to follow. She comes back out after a hushed conversation and warns Ree to stay close to the willows. She also gives Ree fifty dollars and offers to roll a joint for her walk.
After leaving her uncle’s, Ree considers how her father could be anywhere. He is tough—he once got shot in the chest and showed off the wound rather than seek medical attention—but not much of a planner. He once left the Ozarks to make good money on an oil rig but ended up getting paid little to box Mexicans in Texas. Ree thinks of April, the girlfriend on the side he used to have, but it had been two years since he’d said her name.
Halfway home, Ree climbs a snowy ridge to visit the trailer home of her best friend, Gail Lockrum, who is married to a man named Floyd. They married after a drunken hookup resulted in a baby. Ree asks to borrow Floyd’s car to get to Reid’s Gap to visit April. But Floyd won’t let them use the car. Gail laments how sad it is to be told by a man you can’t do something—even sadder when you obey what he says. Ree supposes relationships with men are different when you’re married.
Analysis
In the opening chapters of Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell establishes seven of the novel’s major themes: poverty, criminality, composure, responsibility, drug production and use, escape, and survivalism.
Many of these themes emerge with the introduction of Ree’s daily conflict: how to provide for and protect her mother and brothers. With her criminal father missing and her mentally ill mother unable to help, sixteen-year-old Ree is left alone to make sure the wood-burning stove has adequate fuel and her brothers have enough food. An especially poor family living in a generally impoverished region, they have no money in reserve to buy anything. Thus, the Dollys depend on charity from neighbors, who are bound by the etiquette of the region to recognize the Dollys’ plight and bring them venison and canned goods without putting the family through the indignity of asking.
Ree’s responsibilities also include getting her brothers to school on time, since she knows their mother—made sedate by her medication—is incapable of enforcing discipline and authority anymore. The context in which the Dollys live means that most young men are initiated into the world of drugs and crime before they have finished going through puberty. Ree hopes that, with her stern guidance, the boys may have a chance to escape this miserable fate and live lives free of the drug abuse and danger the elder Dolly men contend with. Ree also seeks escape for herself, making a habit of listening to ambient tape recordings that mentally transport her away from the stresses of the parental responsibility she has assumed within her family.
The conflict that sets the plot in motion enters the story when Sheriff Baskin arrives to inform Ree that he hasn’t been able to find her father, Jessup, in advance of a court date set for the following week. The ongoing antagonistic relationship between the Dolly family and the police is on full display as Ree treats the officer to caustic replies upon being questioned. It is also evident in the way Baskin stoops to the rebellious teenager’s level by condescendingly letting her know her family will be turned out of their house unless Jessup shows up for the hearing. Because her irresponsible father signed over their property while negotiating his bail (i.e. money paid as security for an accused person awaiting trial, which is returned upon their appearing in court), Ree must find him and fix the mess he left.
Ree first seeks information about Jessup from her uncle, Teardrop. Like Ree’s father, Teardrop is a notorious methamphetamine producer (“crank chef”) whose appearance strikes fear even into his niece. As a visual reminder of his place in the criminal underclass, Teardrop is missing an ear from a meth lab explosion. He also has teardrop tattoos on his face that indicate he has killed other men while serving time in prison. The suggestion that he could help locate Jessup provokes an angry outburst from Teardrop, a reaction that hints at the danger of the world Ree is poking around in. With no help from Teardrop, Ree is left alone to imagine where her father might be.
