Reading Order
That Old Ace in the Hole Reading Order
That Old Ace in the Hole (2002) by Annie Proulx is a return to the American plains — set in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle, the flattest, windiest, most extreme section of the American plains — and the story of Bob Dollar, a young man from Denver sent by a hog confinement corporation to secretly buy up land for massive hog farms. Bob arrives in the Panhandle without knowing anything about it and spends months being slowly educated by the people he meets: the old ranchers, the gas station operators, the storytellers in diners, the community members whose families have been in this landscape for generations. That Old Ace in the Hole is the most documentary of Proulx's novels — it is saturated with the history, ecology, and social culture of the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle, and much of the book's pleasure is the accumulation of stories about this specific, largely forgotten corner of America. It is also the most overtly political of her novels: the hog confinement industry is a real and controversial presence in the Panhandle, and the novel is explicitly about the conflict between corporate agriculture and the landscape and communities it destroys. Proulx's portrait of the Panhandle is one of the great sustained American place-portraits in fiction.
Where to start
That Old Ace in the Hole — any Scribner paperback. Background on the Texas Panhandle enriches the reading but is not required; the novel itself provides substantial historical and ecological context through its characters' stories.
Complete That Old Ace in the Hole Book List
- 1Buy
That Old Ace in the Hole
Annie Proulx·2002·The novel — Bob Dollar's months in the Texas/Oklahoma Panhandle as a secret land buyer for a hog corporation; Proulx's most documentary novel and her great portrait of the American plains landscape and the communities and industries that shape it. - 2Buy
The Shipping News
Annie Proulx·1993·Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in her place-rooted fiction; where That Old Ace is the Panhandle, The Shipping News is Newfoundland; both are novels about a specific American (or North American) landscape and its effect on the people who inhabit it. - 3Buy
Close Range: Wyoming Stories
Annie Proulx·1999·Proulx's Wyoming story collection — the companion in her plains fiction; the Wyoming landscape is the cousin of the Panhandle landscape, both defined by wind, flatness, and economic pressure; reading them together shows Proulx's sustained interest in the American plains. - 4Buy
The Worst Hard Time
Timothy Egan·2006·Egan's National Book Award-winning narrative nonfiction about the Dust Bowl — the essential historical companion; the Panhandle Proulx is writing about is exactly the Dust Bowl landscape Egan documents; reading both together gives the full historical context for the world Bob Dollar enters. - 5Buy
Plainsong
Kent Haruf·1999·Haruf's novel about a small Colorado plains town — the companion in American plains fiction; Holt, Colorado's quiet lives are the gentle, lyrical version of what Proulx is doing in the Panhandle with more historical and political weight. - 6Buy
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck·1939·Steinbeck's great Dust Bowl novel — the companion in American fiction about the Oklahoma plains under economic pressure; the Joads' Oklahoma is the Dust Bowl version of the same landscape That Old Ace in the Hole is writing about in the contemporary mode. - 7Buy
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson·2004·Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about a specific small-town community's deep history; John Ames's Iowa is the gentler, more theological version of the communities Proulx is portraying in the Panhandle. - 8Buy
Postcards
Annie Proulx·1992·Proulx's debut novel — the companion in her American landscape fiction; Loyal Blood's journey across the American plains (among other landscapes) is the road version of the same American geography that Bob Dollar enters in That Old Ace in the Hole.
That Old Ace in the Hole — Frequently Asked Questions
What is That Old Ace in the Hole about?
That Old Ace in the Hole follows Bob Dollar, a young man from Denver who works for a hog confinement corporation and is sent to the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle to secretly buy up land for massive hog farms. Bob is supposed to pretend to be doing research and gain the trust of landowners before making purchase offers. Instead, he becomes genuinely interested in the Panhandle and the people who live there — the old ranchers, the community storytellers, the operators of small businesses — and increasingly conflicted about what he is doing. The novel is structured around Bob's education in Panhandle history, ecology, and culture through the stories the community members tell him.
What is the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle?
The Panhandle refers to the narrow strips of Texas and Oklahoma that extend westward from the main bodies of those states, creating the 'panhandle' shape on a map. The Texas Panhandle includes Amarillo and the surrounding high plains; the Oklahoma Panhandle is one of the most sparsely populated areas in the United States. This region is the heart of the Dust Bowl that destroyed farming in the 1930s, and it remains a landscape defined by flatness, wind, and economic precariousness. It is also the area where large-scale hog confinement operations have expanded substantially in recent decades, bringing economic activity but also environmental impact — the conflict Proulx's novel is built around.
How political is That Old Ace in the Hole?
That Old Ace in the Hole is Proulx's most explicitly political novel — the hog confinement industry is a real and controversial presence in the Panhandle, and the novel clearly takes a position on its impact: the hog farms destroy the water table, the odor makes communities uninhabitable, and the economic benefits accrue to corporations rather than to the communities that bear the costs. Proulx has said she researched the novel's political dimension extensively and that the portrayal is based on real conditions. The novel is unusual in contemporary American literary fiction for being so directly engaged with a specific contemporary political and economic issue.
What is Proulx's research process for this novel?
Proulx spent extensive time in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle researching That Old Ace in the Hole — she has said in interviews that she could not write about a place without inhabiting it, and the Panhandle's history, ecology, and culture saturate the novel. The historical sections (told through characters' stories) are drawn from the specific history of the region: the cattle drives, the homestead era, the Dust Bowl, the water table's depletion by irrigation, the natural gas industry, and the arrival of corporate hog farming. The novel's documentary density is the result of this research — it is Proulx's most explicitly historical novel.
What should I read after That Old Ace in the Hole?
After That Old Ace in the Hole, The Shipping News is Proulx's Pulitzer-winning novel and the companion in her place-rooted fiction. The Wyoming story collections (Close Range, 1999; Bad Dirt, 2004) are the most concentrated short fiction. For the Panhandle's history, Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time is the essential nonfiction companion. For American plains fiction, Kent Haruf's Plainsong and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead are the most important companions.
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