Sometimes a Great Notion

The omniscient narrator describes the landscape of the Oregon coast and the fictionalized Wakonda Auga River. The description takes an ominous turn when the narrator focuses on a disembodied arm attached to the pole of a boat going downriver. The end of the novel will reveal that the arm belongs to Henry Stamper, patriarch of the rugged Stamper family. The Stampers reside in an unconventional, ramshackle house on an isolated riverbank that is under constant threat of flooding.

The narrative cuts to a scene of union loggers standing on the bank across from the Stamper house. Floyd Evenwrite, the union’s local representative, and Jonathan Bailey Draeger, the union’s president, discuss the river and its tendency to flood. The union is struggling because Hank Stamper, the eldest son of Henry, is continuing the family’s non-union logging operation despite the fact that the union is on strike—in effect, the Stampers are strikebreakers. Draeger goes to a bar after the union meeting, where he runs into Hank’s wife Viv. She shows Draeger pictures of the Stamper family and says that understanding the complicated family requires knowing their roots.

The narrative flashes back to the early days of the Stampers. Starting in 1898, the notoriously hard working and independent family kept moving further and further west across the United States, always believing that something better lay beyond. Jonas, Henry’s father, settled in Oregon, where his sons flourished, though he returned to his former home in Kansas. Jeremy (Boney) Stokes took care of the family afterward, ensuring that they were fed, but Henry resisted the charity, insisting instead on independence and his motto, “NEVER GIVE AN INCH!” (35).

After Henry’s first wife, Hank’s mother, died when Hank is ten, Henry went to New York for three months and found a new wife, Myra, a student at Stanford University. She moved with Henry back to Oregon, but was unfit for life in the wilderness. She had a son, Leland (Lee) Stanford, but Hank never accepted him as a true brother. When Hank was 16, Myra seduced him, and Lee saw them having sex. After a few years, Myra and Lee went back east, Hank taunting Lee as they left.

Now, 12 years later, Lee gets a postcard from Hank announcing that Henry has been hurt and the family needs Lee’s help to continue the logging operation.