They are in the right place at the right time or vice versa, and are also shaped by the unavoidable influence of political and economic forces like the Great Depression, World War II and the postwar House Un-American Activities Committee. Ultimately, the success and failure each character experiences in their lives is determined by a complex combination of nature, nurture and "some luck," like the weather farmers rely on but can't control. We encounter Frank's precociousness, Joey's sensitivity, Lillian's charm, Henry's emotional distance and Claire's playfulness, traits that serve or debilitate them as they mature. "Rosanna had noticed that each baby, even from birth, had a way of being hugged." Smiley impresses the reader with their uniqueness by shifting perspectives that disconcertingly include those of the Langdon children as infants and toddlers learning how to grip, walk and manipulate their parents and siblings.
They eventually have six children whose personalities are hard-wired from the start. The novel begins in Denby, Iowa, with Rosanna and Walter Langdon, a young couple starting a farm and a family. We aren't defined solely by big events like births and deaths, friendships gained and lost, and passions thwarted and fulfilled, but also by small moments: making an angel food cake, almost falling into a well, wondering why we have to grow up, and experiencing "the silent ecstasy" with which we give thanks when we run a finger along the perfect curve of a baby's ear.
Smiley's ambitious book chronicling an Iowa farm family from 1920 through the 1950s - the first in a planned trilogy - is a long meditation on the little hard bits of things we encounter in our lives that shape our personal histories. You stopped, shook it out of your shoe, and kept walking." Later he thinks, "The whole episode just seemed like a little hard bit of a thing that was in your shoe or something. There's a moment in Jane Smiley's new novel "Some Luck" when Frank, one of the more beguiling characters in a large cast, is beguiled himself by an encounter with a mysterious girl he meets at the Iowa State Fair.
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