It’s impossible that prose could be so distinctive and unorthodox yet never lose its power or its focus.
It’s impossible that characters could be so larger than life, so diverting, so compelling.
It’s impossible that in Properties of Thirst, Marianne Wiggins could alloy into one narrative two frightful examples of American Might Makes Right: the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, and the bullying theft of Sierra runoff water by parched and undeserving Los Angeles. Tout ça c’est un soufflé étonnant [The whole is an astonishing soufflé]: unified, sturdy, audacious, and unforgettable. Brilliant.
Marianne Wiggins has such stalwart and brilliant artists as Ruth Ozeki and Colum McCann in awe and envy with this utterly surpassing novel.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, an idealistic Interior Department lawyer named Schiff is tasked with constructing and administering in California’s Owens Valley an “internment camp”—a prison—for Americans of Japanese descent. This assignment affronts every principle Schiff holds dear; he struggles with this duty, little better than a seeming bit of flotsam amid all that swirls about him. Characters orbit around him strutting and fretting:
Rocky, the patriarch settled in the mountainside mansion for nearly twenty years, who bitterly fought with LA Water and lost; his cultured, sardonic twin sister Cas; and his dazzling gourmet cook daughter, named Sunny; they all encounter Schiff at the most trying, challenging moment in his life. (And Sunny is the reason I wrote a sentence in French. To find out why, you must read the book.)
Add to these dramatis personae the hysterically funny and awe-inspiring GI supply officer who marshals the materials and manages the construction of the camp, and seemingly every Hollywood stock character of the era is represented. In fact, Hollywood companies descend on the town for location shoots, but skip out on their bills. Rocky mentions Tom Mix of early Westerns fame, and later Bogart’s and Katharine Hepburn’s names are dropped.
This cinematic connection intrigues me. The greed, hatred, and jingoism fueling this maelstrom remind strongly of movies back when they actually wrote plots and characters. There are also the vivid visual features, with the rocky Sierra Nevada mountains, the brilliant blue of the sky and its myriad strange effects, and the toxic lakebed, casualty of the LA Water Wars, utterly desiccated and spreading respiratory disease on the air to internee and soldier alike.
These are some of the ills falling out from war and murderous greed. The story carries these weights freely, effortlessly: we are treated to scenes of wide-eyed wonder at the natural world, of heart-melting attraction and love, of rage-inducing neglect and callousness, all to the tune of the never-ceasing delights of Wiggins’s prose. Her eye for detail and her ear for wit, her felicity with phrasemaking and her driving pace—these all shine forth in the reader’s massive payout of joy and wonder. We could cover more, much more, in this bravura offering, but I will cut my excitement and floridity short. Please do yourself the honor of taking up Properties of Thirst.
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