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That Old Ace in the Hole (Abridged)
- Narrated by: Arliss Howard
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task, to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
Dollar finds himself in a Texas town called Woolybucket, whose idiosyncratic inhabitants have ridden out all manner of seismic shifts in panhandle country. These are tough men and women who witnessed firsthand tornadoes, dust storms, and the demise of the great cattle ranches. Now it's feed lots, hog farms, and ever-expanding drylands.
Dollar settles into LaVon Fronk's old bunkhouse for $50 a month, helps out at Cy Frease's Old Dog Cafe, targets Ace and Tater Crouch's ranch for Global Pork, and learns the hard way how vigorously the old owners will hold onto their land, even though their children want no part of it.
Robust, often bawdy, strikingly original and intimate, That Old Ace in the Hole tracks the vast waves of change that have shaped the American landscape and character over the past century. In Bob Dollar, Proulx has created one of the most irresistible characters in contemporary fiction.
Please note: This is the abridged edition. An unabridged version is also available.
Critic reviews
"Proulx imparts [the story] with such minute accuracy that it's like seeing a painting up close and magnified, with each tiny brush stroke lovingly emphasized." (Publishers Weekly)
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Story
With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a beloved bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an unlettered roofer who kept food on his family’s table through the worst of the Great Depression
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Deeply moving
- By Kate on 08-12-03
By: Rick Bragg
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Cataloochee
- By: Wayne Caldwell
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Debut novelist Wayne Caldwell's Cataloochee -a rich, vivid, arresting work beginning at the dawn of Reconstruction - sprawls across the succeeding generations like the vast green mountains of its rural North Carolina setting. Best-selling author Charles Frazier calls it "a brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America." This enthralling saga evokes the full color spectrum of mountain life, from lights to darks and every shade in between.
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Love It!
- By Cynthia J. Hakansson on 02-27-09
By: Wayne Caldwell
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Provinces of Night
- By: William Gay
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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E.F. Bloodworth has returned to his home - a forgotten corner of Tennessee - after 20 years of roaming. The wife he walked out on has withered and faded, his three sons are grown and angry. Warren is a womanizing alcoholic, Boyd is driven by jealousy to hunt down his wife's lover, and Brady puts hexes on his enemies from his mamma's porch. Only Fleming, the old man's grandson, treats him with the respect his age commands, and sees past all the hatred to realize the way it can posion a man's soul.
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Story and Narration a perfect match
- By 99hedys on 10-03-15
By: William Gay
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The Hearts of Horses
- A Novel
- By: Molly Gloss
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The irresistible tale of 19-year-old Martha Lessen, a female horse whisperer trying to make a go of it in a man's world. It was thought that the only way to break a horse was to buck the wild out of it, and broken ribs and tough falls just went with the job. But over several long, hard winter months, many of the townsfolk in this remote county of eastern Oregon witness Martha's way of talking in low, sweet tones to horses believed beyond repair---and getting miraculous, almost immediate results.
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Simple, Honest, Wonderful
- By Julie W. Capell on 11-08-09
By: Molly Gloss
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Hard Country
- A Novel
- By: Michael McGarrity
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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National best-selling author and New Mexico native Michael McGarrity takes listeners to the wild territory of the late 19th-century American Southwest for this epic tale. After the deaths of his wife and brother, John Kerney gives up his West Texas ranch and heads south in search of a new home. Soon Kerney is offered work trailing cattle to the New Mexico Territory - a job that will forever change his life.
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Hard Country lives up to it's title.
- By mar on 12-14-12
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Father and I Were Ranchers
- Little Britches # 1
- By: Ralph Moody
- Narrated by: Cameron Beierle
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Moody family moves from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Experience the pleasures and perils of ranching in 20th Century America, through the eyes of a youngster.
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Very dissappointed , too much cussing.
- By Lovelessnomore on 05-29-15
By: Ralph Moody
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A Thousand Acres
- By: Jane Smiley
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a tangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father, Larry Cook, grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand-acre farm. As each couple struggles with their own tragedies and challenges, they know their father is judging them in light of the weighty inheritance that hovers within their reach.
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good book bad reader
- By C. Carlson on 08-07-08
By: Jane Smiley
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The Neon Rain
- A Dave Robicheaux Novel
- By: James Lee Burke
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels began with this first hard-hitting entry in the series. In The Neon Rain, Detective Robicheaux fishes a prostitute's corpse from a New Orleans bayou and finds that no one, not even the law, cares about a dead hooker.
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Where it all began.
- By 9S on 12-06-09
By: James Lee Burke
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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Pronto
- By: Elmore Leonard
- Narrated by: Alexander Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The feds want Miami bookmaker Harry Arno to squeal on his wiseguy boss. So they're putting word out on the street that Arno's skimming profits from "Jimmy Cap" Capotorto - which he is, but everybody does it. He was planning to retire to Italy someday anyway, so Harry figures now's a good time to get lost. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens knows Harry's tricky - the bookie ditched him once in an airport while in the marshal's custody - but not careful.
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Great character, even better dialogue!
- By Ron on 11-15-11
By: Elmore Leonard
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Sometimes a Great Notion
- By: Ken Kesey
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 30 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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A literary icon sometimes seen as a bridge between the Beat Generation and the hippies, Ken Kesey scored an unexpected hit with his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His successful follow-up, Sometimes a Great Notion, was also transformed into a major motion picture, directed by and starring Paul Newman. Here, Oregon’s Stamper family does what it can to survive a bitter strike dividing their tiny logging community. And as tensions rise, delicate family bonds begin to fray and unravel.
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Sometimes a Great Novel Pops up out of Nowhere
- By Mr. Eyuz on 06-07-19
By: Ken Kesey
What listeners say about That Old Ace in the Hole (Abridged)
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Plumeria
- 09-25-05
Sorry it was abridged
Classic Annie. Beautifully written. I thought the ending odd. It seemed she wasn't sure how to make it stop. But that's the only negative. Besides the fact it was abridged. I hate that!
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Overall
- Mark
- 03-13-03
Wonderful characters and a Message, too
Having read the Shipping News, I figured this might be a good read with interesting characters and I was not wrong at all. Annie is a master of the descriptive phrase. She doesn't miss a detail. Narration in this book is excellent, adding greatly to the "feel" of the book. My Dad grew up in the Panhandle, so this made this all the more interesting. And it does speak volumes about big industry and our environment, especially telling in today's political atmosphere, where it seems like we are doing our best to gut our environment in a short-sighted frenzy to make a buck.
If you enjoy a "craftsman" of the written word, then you'll love Annie Proulx.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Iver
- 07-25-04
Masterfully Written and Read
This book is typical of Annie Proulx's work. It develops compelling characters and situations with great care and detail while educating the reader about the real-life environmental, social, and cultural settings in which the fictional story takes place. There is certainly a hard edge to the author's writing: many of the situations described are downright depressing. However, the protagonist's persistence through difficult circumstances, grace under pressure, and concern for others are also vividly portrayed. I learned a great deal about the history and geography of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, and found the book to be compelling and inspiring.
This is one of the best abridged audiobooks I have listened to. Not only is the story outstanding, but the reader uses his considerable acting skills to portray the colorful voices of many of the characters. I find myself wanting to purchase the book now, in order to linger over some of the passages, learn the spellings of some of the names, and read what was omitted in the abridgement.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Ranch Girl
- 06-17-03
Fantastic!
This book paints a vivid portrait of the Texas Panhandle - the scenery (breathtaking), the weather (unpredictable), and especially the people (strong, eccentric). It tells the story of a young man's journey from Denver to the panhandle to find land for corporate hog farms. He becomes part of the local community and in his search for hog farm sites (and hog farms are highly unpopular among the locals) he begins to get a sense of what he really wants to do with his life. The local characters that inhabit this story are absolutely delightful and the reader does a superb job, giving each character a voice and making you feel that you are right there in the room with them. Fantastic!
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5 people found this helpful
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- C. Levitan
- 09-24-12
Beautiful regional coming-of-age story
Would you listen to That Old Ace in the Hole again? Why?
This great story recounts Bob Dollar's trying to set up hog farms in the Panhandle, a job he loathes for a goal he hates, against people he respects. The story is a little like 'Shipping News', a lost man who saves himself, helped by the community and the land.
What did you like best about this story?
The narration of this story was great, with perfect voices for each character.
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Overall
- Donald
- 05-26-07
solid writing and terrific narrator
this was a charming book - well-written - with characters you felt you knew by the end. The narrator was fantastic and you will delight in simply hearing the phrases flow by. Here Proulx creates a lush 'texture' you feel immersed in.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- N. Possas
- 04-08-08
Lots of fun
This was a great slice-of-life story about life on the Texas panhandle with an engaging central character, multiple interesting secondary characters and a terrific narrator. My only regret was that the book only came in the abridged version.
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Overall
- Charles
- 06-06-04
Slow and fragmented
Some novels are intended to be epic. This means that they wind on an on for ever while you keep waiting for the story to take off. Maybe the next chapter will be a little more interesting?
Annie Proulx excels at writing epic novels where the tide of events runs slower than the Don. Her characters are like butterflies, slowly finding their way across a meadow by turning this way and that way. Introducing yet another queer character into That Old Ace in the Hole does not help very much, because the story still remains fragmented.
I get the feeling that even Annie got fed up on this one before she reached the finishing line. Question is - does anyone bother to read a novel, intent on unearthing any gems, before it goes off to the publisher?
Four stars goes to Arliss Howard, who is a magnificent reader. I'll probably end up listening to the whole novel once again, simply because listening to his voice is such a pleasure.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Dorn
- 09-28-05
As good as you would expect
As good a view of the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandle as the Shipping News was of Nova Scotia.
Well, I could be wrong, having spent no significant time in either place, but after reading this, I felt I knew the people and the culture. On top of that, there's a good story with genuinely interesting characters. The narration is excellent, always interesting with very clear and consistent distinctions between characters.
I have no regrets about this one!
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Overall
- yellow rose
- 01-13-05
little errors too much
I'm a fan of the author, but I believe one cannot write as easily about Texas as one can other places. A small error here and there is not so bad, but when coupled with the occasional pronunciation error of the narrator when trying to sound Texan...I quit the book with a sigh after a little over an hour. This Texan will read the book instead, and forgive the outsider errors because the author is so good.
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1 person found this helpful