• Winter's Bone

  • A Novel
  • By: Daniel Woodrell
  • Narrated by: Emma Galvin
  • Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (3,106 ratings)

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Winter's Bone  By  cover art

Winter's Bone

By: Daniel Woodrell
Narrated by: Emma Galvin
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Publisher's summary

The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date.

Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley. With two young brothers depending on her and a mother who's entered a kind of second childhood, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. She has grown up in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks and learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. But along the way to a shocking revelation, Ree discovers unforeseen depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost.

©2006 Daniel Woodrell (P)2010 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Like his characters, and especially his teen characters, Woodrell's prose mixes tough and tender so thoroughly yet so delicately that we never taste even a hint of false bravado, on the one hand, or sentimentality, on the other. And Ree is one of those heroines whose courage and vulnerability are both irresistible and completely believable - think of not just Mattie Ross in True Grit but also Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or even Eliza Naumann in Bee Season. One runs out of superlatives to describe Woodrell's fiction. ( Booklist)
“At its best, the novel captures the near-religious criminal mania pervasive in rural communities steeped in drug culture. Woodrell's prose, lyrical as often as dialogic, creates an unwieldy but alluring narrative that allows him to draw moments of unexpected tenderness from predictable scripts.” ( Publisher’s Weekly)
“In spare but evocative prose, Woodrell depicts a harsh world in which the responsibilities for survival ultimately give Rees meaning and direction. He depicts the landscape, people, and dialects with stunning realism. A compelling testament to how people survive in the worst of circumstances.” ( School Library Journal)

What listeners say about Winter's Bone

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    1,461
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  • 3 Stars
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Story
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic country noir

This was awesome. The writing is wonderful, and the story is compelling and emotional. I highly recommend listening to this, then seeing the movie, in that order.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Very Best

The narration is almost perfect. The story will eat your life until you finish this book. It’s intense and discouraging and uplifting. What a delicate balance.
BUT, when you’re finished, it won’t leave you. This is the kind of book that’s still good next year. Still a pleasure to hear.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

narration was excellent.

best book I've listened to in a while. i didn't want it to be over

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Still worth reading even if you've seen the movie

Any additional comments?

Completely immerses you in Ozark poverty for the tale of a girl looking for her meth-cooking father, who put up their house for his bail bond. If he doesn't show, the house will be taken away — and the girl, her two little brothers and mentally disabled mother will be tossed out. If you've seen the movie, the book is pretty much exactly like it, sort of like how the movie "Silence of the Lambs" was a great re-creation of the book. But it's still worth reading for Woodrell's beautiful language. Bechdel test: Passed.

The narration is excellent. Galvin becomes the main character.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Not a fan

What disappointed you about Winter's Bone?

The book didn't seem to have much of a plot. It had one main focus and I didn't feel like I got to know the characters.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent writing, story and performance !!!

This is a story around the age old themes "honor among thieves" and "blood is thicker than water." If you were raised in the south or the mountains you'll find it hard to put down. I highly recommend. If you like the TV series Justified, you'll love this book. The narrator is excellent and I can't wait to hear more from her.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Good to senses

Kind of just OK. Not enough plot development for me. Wanted more twists. Plus, a little more historical background would have helped. Why is this are so backward? Why are they so clan-ish? Seemed to be more about atmospherics. About a third of the words seem to be adjectives and adverbs. Plus, he uses some weird devices that are cool at first but get annoying after awhile. He does things like drop articles: Instead of "snow felt to the ground" it's "snow felt to ground". OK, we get it. It's snowing and it falls on the ground.

But I will say the narrator is really excellent and brings the dialect alive. Really nice job. So it's worth it from that standpoint. I mean "the words fell strong upon ears and I left, head busing." Get ready for loads of that sort of stuff.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Impressive story and narration.

I wasn’t sure at first if I would like this book. The cadence and the poetic language was difficult to get into. It is incredibly beautifully written as well as narrated. Definitely worth the time to adjust to it!

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Kinda disappointed

Maybe because I’m a huge fan of the movie having seen it over fifty times I didn’t enjoy the performance of the narrator I just couldn’t bring myself to become a fan of her as Ree or as any of the other characters , I really enjoyed the audiobook a lot minus the narrator. I got a lot more inside scoop on who’s who and family lineage. I was hoping to find out what made Uncle teardrop so notoriously bad ass and why they all were so scared of him. Maybe I’ll write some fan fiction.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Authentic

This book captured the reality of a culture without glorifying it or putting it down. Not for squeamish people who want to believe “those things” happen to other people. Strong female lead, for sure! I also took from the book that it takes courage to examine where you come from, and to make a decision on how you want to live looking at all factors. This story is about Ozark clan family feuds and making a living illegally (for generations) and understanding the rules of such life. Our heroine has to work within those rules to keep the family land. I liked the book so much I saw the movie. The movie stuck with the story and seemed to just skim the top off what the book revealed. There is a lot of prose and rhetoric in the book, giving it (a LOT of) depth. The flashbacks and main character’s thoughts take up more than half of the book. Not for readers who want action based storytelling. The movie gives you that; the book follows the heart of the main character.

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2 people found this helpful