William Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of King Lear in 1605. Almost four centuries later, Jane Smiley offered her interpretation of the Bard's story with her 1991 novel "A Thousand Acres."

In Smiley's book, King Lear becomes farm owner and family patriarch Larry, and she rechristens Lear's three daughters - Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia - as Ginny, Rose, and Caroline. As in the original play, Smiley's story includes sibling rivalry, a patriarch who goes mad and pushes away his daughters, generational conflict, madness in a driving rainstorm, and a friend who loses his eyesight.

This novel explores many themes from King Lear, including family dynamics, gender roles, and betrayal. But Smiley makes the story her own, taking the characters in a new direction. She brings home this tragedy by placing the characters on a modern farm and introducing a childhood filled with alcoholism, sexual abuse, and repressed memories. The bastard son becomes a prodigal draft dodger, and his father's blindness occurs more covertly. The abusers of "A Thousand Acres" hide their sins by their public civility and respectability.

"Acres" puts its own spin on the Bard's tragedy, setting her story in twentieth-century rural Iowa. Family patriarch Larry decides to retire and leave his farm to his daughters, but excludes his youngest, Caroline, when she fails to express sufficient enthusiasm for the idea. The eldest daughter, Ginny, tells the story in the first person, providing background and motivation absent from Shakespeare's tale. While Lear's daughters betray their father for greed, Larry's daughters have good reason for their animosity. "King Lear" ends with the death of his daughters and the monarch's remorse. There is death in this twentieth-century tale, but many of the characters survive, and the father never repents his sins. The daughters seek revenge on their father and partially achieve it, but this brings them no peace.

Ms. Smiley has a gift for bringing the reader into a scene by revealing small details, such as the signs on the store next door or the sound in the next room. She also has a habit of revealing major plot developments with a single sentence. A major character dies in an automobile accident just before the end of a chapter—no buildup, no foreshadowing - just the sudden and unexpected demise.

"A Thousand Acres" draws on Shakespeare's King Lear as a blueprint, but it goes beyond that inspiration to tell a story that remains relevant today.