Thundering Tra-La-Las
About the Novel
This Midwestern novel was written in 1984 as a hallmark compunction. The title's exuberant onomatopoeia belies the serious work of fiction beneath, a novel that grapples with the contradictions of life on the Great Plains.
Thundering Tra-La-Las captures both the literal thunder of Nebraska's dramatic weather and the metaphorical thunder of lives in collision and transformation. The "tra-la-las" suggest the songs we sing to make sense of chaos, the human impulse toward music and meaning even in the midst of storms.
The 1984 Moment
Written during the author's undergraduate years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, this novel represents the ambitious reach of a young writer testing the boundaries of form and subject. The year 1984 carried its own literary weight, Orwell's prophecy having arrived as a calendar date rather than a dystopia.
Nebraska in 1984 was deep in the farm crisis, a period when family operations that had worked the land for generations faced foreclosure and dissolution. This economic and social upheaval provides context for any fiction emerging from the region during this period, whether addressed directly or felt as an undertow beneath other narratives.
Hallmark Compunction
The phrase "hallmark compunction" suggests a defining work of conscience, a novel written not merely for craft or career but from necessity. Some stories demand to be told; the writer's compunction, that inner drive toward moral and artistic obligation, marks the work as essential rather than elective.