Joe Wilkins

ay a boy up and offers the inside of himself, and no one, not even his family, knows how to make sense of what they see. Say a boy holds it all in. Jesus, what chance did some boys have? from The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins

Montana’s gorgeous open spaces, the brutally hard work of ranching, the toxic masculinity that targets boys who are different, sensitive, who wore their hair long. The beauty of the land. The men who respect the land and those who torture it. The ones who left and the ones show more who remained, and those who return. The Entire Sky encompasses it all, told in resonant imagery and heartbreaking honesty.

It is a story about runaways. Rene, his aged body complaining, having just buried his wife, his tortured soul giving up, takes off for his ranch, planning his demise. And Justin, the unwanted boy, who had lashed out against his torturer and ran away, now ready to just lay down and die. A boy too much the son Rene had failed to understand. Fate brings them together.

Rene enlists the boy to help with the spring lambing. Justin marvels at the new life, learns quick and works hard. It is death that the boy has trouble accepting.

Ranching was life distilled: birth and death, the hard winter giving away to spring, and spring to the heat and fast black storms of summer. from The Entire Sky by Joe Wilkins

Rene’s daughter had left for college, married, and had children. She returned to help when her mother was dying. She is rethinking her life decisions, planning on staying. Discovering her father missing, she know where he has gone, and gives him a few days alone at the ranch. She accepts a substitute teaching job in town, and reconnects with her first love. And she thinks about her brother, how she had failed him.

Rene offers Justin a safe haven. He encourages the boy to return to school come fall. Justin makes a friend. But the danger for boys like him can not be escaped.

This book will break your heart and mend it again.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. show less

FALL BACK DOWN WHEN I DIE is Joe Wilkins’ tightly plotted allegorical Western about poverty, family history, and fate where the "failures of the nation, the failures of myth, met the failures of men.” The themes are all too common. Ranchers, still cling to outdated notions of the “old West.” Government intrudes with measures that are often ill-conceived. Resistance inevitably turns violent. And hatred festers over the years. Haven’t we seen this scenario played out repeatedly (e.g. show more Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, the American South, and so it goes)?

Wilkins alternates between three narrators to tell his story. Verl Newman writes to his son in a grade school composition booklet while hiding out in the rugged Bull Mountains of Eastern Montana following the murder of a BLM game warden who confronts him about illegally shooting a wolf. Verl is a metaphor for the old school Montanans who see their lifestyle threatened from all sides. Their sole solution comes down to violence. Verl is a folk hero to the ranchers, characterized by a local militia called the Bull Mountain Resistance.

Verl’s son, Wendell has less than $100 to his name following his mother’s fatal illness. He owes back taxes on his land and is barely getting by as a ranch hand. His cousin, Lacy, is a meth addict who was incarcerated for child endangerment and neglect of her 7-year-old son, Rowdy. Wendell, haunted by his own troubled childhood, is compelled to provide some stability to Rowdy. Clearly, Rowdy is damaged. He is mute and developmentally delayed. Wilkins portrays him as a boy who may be on the autism spectrum, nevertheless redeemable.

The third narrator is Gillian Houlton. Her husband was the game warden killed by Verl several years ago. She is the widowed mother of Maddy. Despite having made her way as a teacher and school administrator, Gillian is still bitter and opinionated. She is particularly judgmental toward the ranchers, thus serving as a counterpoint to Verl.

The three plotlines converge in a tragic incident resulting in an accidental death and the unfortunate recurrence of Verl’s fate.

The novel evokes a dark and pessimistic mood depicted by its bleak setting in rural Eastern Montana and a cast of damaged characters struggling to overcome their personal histories and fates. show less

Author Joe Wilkins does not cut eastern Montana any slack: "The land where the failures of the nation, the failures of myth, met the failures of men." The men and women he conjures for us do fail in entirely human ways. The steady pace of most of the book is deceptive as it all seems to have gone by too quickly once the final action starts.

Fall Back Down When I Die by Joe Wilkins is a highly recommended politically laden drama set in Montana.

Wendell Newman, 24, is a ranch hand in Eastern Montana who is seriously in debt after his mother's death. He owes back taxes on the land he inherited and is paying off his mother's medical bills. When a social worker shows up, Wendell learns he is the only relative of seven-year-old Rowdy Burns, who is the son of Wendell's incarcerated cousin. Rowdy, who is mute and likely on the autism show more spectrum, moves in with Wendell and the two form a strong bond.

There is trouble brewing in Montana, between the cowboys and ranchers of the old West and the environmentalists, with the first legal wolf hunt, and increasing regulations being enforced on BLM land, and increasing state involvement with the rural families. As much as Wendell wants to stay out of it, he is a part of it simply because his father, Verl, took a stand years earlier and killed a man. Then Verl went into hiding and on the run, leaving his family behind.

The story unfolds between the point-of-view of three characters and chapters alternate between the voices of Verl, Wendell, and Gillian. The novel opens with the first person account of Verl, on the run and evading the law in the Big Dry mountains. His chapters consist of what he is writing to his son in one of Wendell's notebooks that he grabbed when leaving. Wendell and Gillian's narratives are told in third person accounts. Gillian is an assistant principal and counselor, who wants to help but also allows her own judgmental opinions of "rural stupidity" to color her actions. It was her husband, Kevin, that Verl killed years earlier. At the end of the novel two other voices are heard from.

The writing is beautifully descriptive and poetic as it carefully and skillfully captures the setting and the characters. The characters are all well developed and precisely depicted as individuals with their own beliefs and feelings. The novel is slow-paced at the beginning, taking time to describe the land and people as the story leads, inevitably to the haunting and heart-breaking climax.

All the characters are survivors and suffering from emotional damaged in some way. Wendell and Rowdy are wonderful characters and immediately captured my heart. Gillian, I must admit, caused conflicting emotions. She annoyed me since she just seemed to be so opinionated and judgemental about the people she was supposed to be helping, but I alternately had compassion for her and her own struggles.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Little, Brown and Company.
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