Jack Stoddard is a tall, dark and handsome scalawag with a weakness for whiskey, women and gambling. He also is partial to his middle daughter Jeanine, whom he treats like the son he always wanted but never had. Jack, who is "a good hand with horses" and "could take on any job of freighting," searches for work while America struggles through dust storms, drought and the Great Depression. After crude oil springs up from the Texas earth, Jack moves his wife Elizabeth and their daughters --- Mayme, Jeanine and Bea --- across the rugged fields of East Texas. But no matter what he tries to make his family's life better, it ends up a failure.

After Jack is "felled by sour gas," the family's situation turns from bad to worse. When Jack dies alone in a jail cell, the Stoddard women are unable to pay the ten-dollar rent they owe, and the landlord knocks on their door and turns them out in shame. With their meager yet treasured possessions carefully packed, and with Bea's cat and their father's racehorse in tow, the Stoddard women travel to Elizabeth's family's abandoned homestead. They arrive at the Tolliver farmhouse in Central Texas in the middle of the night. With its broken windows, overgrown yard and damaged roof, the Tolliver house sits on a ridge overlooking the "heavy darkness of the Brazos River valley…adrift in a sea of starlight."

It is on the Tolliver farm that the Stoddard women pull together to survive their harsh and cruel circumstances. They now have a place to live rent-free, but to continue to stay on the farm, they must first pay off the delinquent taxes that have accumulated over its years of abandonment. The family survives on cornmeal, beans and little else, but out of pride they refuse to accept relief. After settling in, the older sisters decide to work together to save the farm --- and their family.

Mayme finds a job to put food on the table and set money aside for the taxes, and Jeanine takes up sewing and begins to rebuild the farmhouse, which has suffered from years of neglect. Bea, the youngest, continues her studies and writes her stories down in her Big Chief tablet, until an accident leaves her near death and unable to walk. A county nurse comes to the farmhouse and threatens to send Bea to a home for children in Dallas because the family can't afford an operation that will help Bea walk again.

To keep the family together, Jeanine gambles on their future. She makes the decision to sell Smoky Joe (their horse) to Ross Everett, a rancher and horse breeder who has had dealings with Jack Stoddard in the past. Then, in desperation, Elizabeth invests what little money her daughters have scraped together in a wildcat oil well that could make them rich --- or ruin their hopes of carving out a better life.

STORMY WEATHER is a poignant tale about courage, hope and sacrifice in the bleakest circumstances. The historic setting, realistic dialogue and well-drawn characters make it a joy to read. But the elegant description and the graceful writing of author Paulette Jiles make it a story that is hard to forget.