The copy of the book was no longer worn and yellowed. Its crisp pages were once again in manuscript form sitting on a table, being avoided by David Rhodes as long as possible.

It's been 30 years since he last paged through the novel. The words were fresh again with pleasant surprises and horrifying chapters.

The author was someone Rhodes once knew, back in the early '70s when things were different and being naive was expected. Back when there were grand expectations of a life to come. Back when being raised in Des Moines wasn't so long ago. Back before the motorcycle accident.

The pages tell of a young man from Iowa, fleeing his life after a tragedy and returning again one day.

Rhodes was asked to read the book one more time by a publicist who wanted his input on the story, which was about to be republished. As the deadline approached this year, Rhodes found himself not wanting to look inside the pages for fear of what he'd see, and how he wished the story could be different.

Even though his name is on the cover, Rhodes doesn't really know that person anymore.

"It's really like someone I used to know," he said from his remote 35-acre farmhouse near Wonewoc, surrounded by changing colors among the hills.

"Rock Island Line" was the third book Rhodes wrote in a decade that saw the end of Nixon and Vietnam. The book garnered critical acclaim during a time when large publishing companies had yet to turn down his work. He was on his way to becoming a major novelist in America - a shy one.

But that was a long time ago - before Rhodes took one last ride on his Ducati.

And before he disappeared from the literary limelight for 30 years.

In the mail

Rushing water had closed roads from here to everywhere during the June floods, but Kevin Larimer was coming home to Wisconsin.

He was on his way to Wonewoc, past his hometown of Portage, to see a man about a used book.

He acquired the used piece of literature a few years back from a publicist who had mailed it to his New York office at Poets and Writers Magazine, where he's the deputy editor. It was a worn copy, discarded from a library in Paducah, Ky.

Larimer was driving from Milwaukee, where his plane landed, to find out what happened to the man who wrote "Rock Island Line."

How does someone who was on his way to becoming a successful American novelist fall off the literary landscape?

For more than two years a publicist had stopped by Larimer's office promoting a couple of books for coverage, and one day she mentioned an author from Wisconsin who lives within an hour of where Larimer grew up.

"There's something about receiving a used book in the mail," Larimer said.

The book sparked Larimer to read Rhodes' other novels, and set out on a journey to find him.

"About halfway there, I got a call on my cell phone and it was David letting me know there were quite a few road closures," Larimer said.

Enough floodwaters had parted for him to make the trip and spend a day with Rhodes on his farm about 8 miles from Wonewoc, set in the heart of farm country with winding pastures and cows along hillsides.

"He definitely came across as a very down-to-earth guy," Larimer said. "He's not writing for the attention, he's not even writing to get published."

Rhodes' story is unique, and one that Larimer seldom has seen in his nine years with the magazine.

What Larimer got out of their conversation was a great story for the September/October issue of Poets and Writers.

But more importantly, he got answers.

The hospital

They were just dreams he was having - paralyzed, with doctors poking and prodding.

"I had dreams that were much more filled with formative material and premonition," Rhodes said. "They seemed more like premonitions than warnings."

While he was finding success as a novelist, Rhodes had yet to crack any monetary mountain during the 1970s, and thus found himself working the late shift at the Sauk County Health Care Clinic, watching over elderly men.

It was there he received his most startling premonition, but he thought nothing of it at the time.

A patient, who was staying up past bed time, was asking Rhodes if he heard that sound - the motorcycle.

Rhodes just wanted him to go to bed. He did not hear the motorcycle that night. But he knew the sound well. Motorcycles have always been something of a passion for Rhodes. He drove his Ducati for years, but traded it to a neighbor for a bicycle so he could travel down the long, gravel road that leads to his house to get the morning mail.

Rhodes had become fearful of motorcycles, and he was done with that wilder, more adventurous part of his life. He was a responsible family man now who had a wife and child to look after.

The day after the patient asked Rhodes if he heard the motorcycles, the neighbor brought the Ducati by to show Rhodes it was running again, but not smooth.

Rhodes decided to take one last ride.

"I got to going too fast and couldn't control it around a gravel corner," he said.

What the crash took from Rhodes that day was his ability to walk. He had broken his back and was paralyzed from the sternum down. It was 1977, and his career was on hold.

"I spent the better part of two years in the hospital, or living at an apartment (in Madison) and going to the hospital every day," he said.

After that period, Rhodes, his wife and daughter moved back to the Wonewoc area. But the accident took those relationships, too. Rhodes' wife and daughter moved out after a year, and David found himself addicted to morphine.

Therapy

"I continued to write," Rhodes insists, as if to say he didn't give up the pen, it was the pen who gave him up.

"I had three manuscripts. I sent them out a little bit."

The writing had become skewed by his life. Still, it was a way to work through things, like it always has been for Rhodes. It was therapy - like the 1,200-page manuscript about a guy who had a motorcycle accident and was paralyzed.

There were no takers, though.

"(Writing) has always been that for me, even the stuff I don't want to ever see published. It's a way for me to work through my own feelings and my own thoughts and the people I am in relations with," he said. "It gives me insight into myself and others. Other people don't need to do that, but it's always been very therapeutic to me."

Decades passed and Rhodes continued to write. He met and married Edna, a women he says he cannot live 2 minutes without.

"From the very beginning I realized I wasn't going to mentally survive if I couldn't create a new life for myself that's not dependent on thinking and being before the accident," he said.

A publicist from Milkweed Editions, a small publishing company in Minnesota, contacted Rhodes a few years ago about his latest work, called "Driftless," which he has spent the last decade of his life on.

"I don't know what would have happened if they hadn't stepped in," Rhodes said.

"Driftless" was officially released Tuesday and already has received more attention than Rhodes' other novels.

No longer adrift

There are days when Rhodes can hardly look at his writing. His skepticism keeps him at bay.

"I'm an extremely undisciplined person. I can't make myself work on a schedule that isn't very, very flexible. An hour one day, 14 or 15 the next," he said.

"I'm kind of a believer that if writing becomes too big in your life, then it suffers. It needs to be fed by the people around you."

What struck Larimer about Rhodes' story is about much more than his comeback. It's how Rhodes is unlike other authors.

"He's never given a reading - never read his work in public," Larimer said. "There's something about that ..."

Rhodes' neighbors have no idea he is a writer, he said. He's just a farm neighbor. And though his books have small towns and familiar themes in his life in them, Rhodes does not like to write about himself or others he knows.

"Driftless" is a work of fiction, but has elements from another tragedy in Rhodes' life. It's about a friend who died in a farming accident.

Rhodes was asked to give a eulogy for his friend, and while looking out at the people attending the service, he came to a realization.

"I got to thinking. I thought I knew this guy really well, but I just knew a tiny piece of him. If you really knew him, you had to know him and who he was to all these people," Rhodes said. "And that's what ‘Driftless' is about."

The novel does not have a main character, rather a plot about 12 people's lives and how they interact.

The book, Rhodes says, is much different than his early work. He took more chances then, he said, adding that the style of ‘Driftless' is what took so long to complete.

There are flavors of his life through his novels, and certainly Rhodes' life story would make ideal fodder for a book. But he chooses fiction, he says, so his stories don't seem like a lie.

"We're just pretending here," he said.

 

 About Kevin Larimer

Kevin Larimer is a poet.

But like most of us, life interrupts plans.

When he graduated Portage High School in 1991 - having spent some time at the Portage Daily Register - he set out for college in Milwaukee on a journalism path.

Larimer found creative writing and poetry through the Iowa Writers' Workshop in the mid-1990s. It's the same school David Rhodes found himself at in the late '60s where he finished his first novel, "The Last Fair Deal Going Down," which was published by Atlantic-Little Brown.

Larimer was on the path to becoming a poet, but had to convince his family of that.

"I didn't go to (college in) Milwaukee thinking that I was going to be a poet," he said. "I do recall a conversation on the phone (with my mother), and she was wondering what I was going to do. She was very encouraging. She supported it and wondered about what kind of job one can get with that degree."

Larimer took to New York after Iowa, and landed his current job at Poets and Writers Magazine within a year.

While he has had a dozen pieces of his poetry published, Larimer said it's taken a back set somewhat to his wife and two kids. But he still wants to write poetry for publication again, and hopes to complete his own book one day.

 

About the book

-- What: "Driftless"

-- Published by: Milkweed

-- Pages: 352

Available through most online book outlets or major bookstores.

Also check out other books by David Rhodes: "The Last Fair Deal Going Down," "The Easter House" and "Rock Island Line."