I have read the book through and it has to sink in a bit, before I will talk about it further.
Some thoughts while reading:
To my surprise this book felt very familiar. I grew up reading this kind of books; not from American authors but Sandinavian. These were novels that were set in a rural environment, with people in a closely knit community. People who had values and standards and, though outwardly calm, a dramatic inner life. It was not done to speak about emotions and such.
I found myself thinking of the Norwegen writer Trygve Gulbranssen(1895-1962) who is know for the Bjorndal Trilogy. I remember ‘Beyond sing the woods’. The trilogy is translated in English as ‘The wind from the mountains’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trygve_Gulbranssen
And the people in the book remind me of the ones in the work of the famous Swedish film director, producer and writer Ernst Ingmar Bergman(1918-2007), who in his films give such an interesting view on the workings of the mind of his countrymen. His work/films, he wrote most of the scripts himself, often dealt with the existential themes of “O’Pioneers’, namely death, illness, betrayal and insanity, I think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman