Derek Sherman

Caleb Oberest works in a highly paid corporate position in New York City until the events of 9-11 shatter his world. On an impulse, he quits his job and moves to Colorado to join an elite group of ultra marathoners. These runners slave beneath the tutelage of a man named Mack who believes in pushing one’s body to such an extreme as to produce kinetic energy capable of sustaining the body with as little as 4 hours of sleep and very little fuel. To belong, members of the group sever ties to show more family and friends and vow to turn from any romantic relationships. Caleb immerses himself in this running cult, cutting all connection to his family to become a premier ultra marathoner. But then a young woman named June arrives in the mountains of Colorado with her very ill infant daughter, Lily, looking for the healing powers which Mack promises…and everything changes.

Shane, Caleb’s brother, works at a biotech firm which finds cures for fatal diseases. He and his wife, Janelle, are expecting their first baby and life has never seemed better. Then Shane gets a letter from Caleb after eleven years of silence. Caleb is desperate for a cure for Lily. Reeling from his own feelings toward becoming a father, Shane makes a decision to help in any way he can even if it means putting his career and everything he loves at risk.

Derek Sherman’s debut novel, Race Across the Sky, explores the limits of human endurance both physically and emotionally. Narrated in alternating points of view between Shane and Caleb, the story reels the reader into the obsessive world of competitive distance running and the lure of cults, as well as giving a disturbing glimpse into the powerful, financially driven realm of biotechnology firms and the development of medicines.

Sherman’s prose is character driven and compelling. From page one, I found myself intrigued and embroiled in the lives of the characters. Sensitive without being maudlin, the story is ultimately about love – that between brothers, and between parents and children, and also romantic love and how it can save us from despair. As I was reading, I found myself asking “What would you do to save someone else? What would you do for the person you love? Would you risk everything?”

Race Across the Sky is dazzling in its descriptions of the Colorado and California mountains. As a runner once myself, I thought Sherman truly captured the compulsion of athletic competition and the battle that runners have within themselves to simply finish a distance race. I also loved the insight into the medical world of drug companies and the cutting edge technology of the biotech field.

I fully enjoyed this novel from beginning to end. It is compulsively readable with a strong plot, well-constructed characters, and terrific writing. Original and thought provoking, I can recommend Race Across the Sky for readers who like their novels to be provocative. show less

Some people love to run. It can be a compulsion, an escape, a state of mind. For people who love to run, it is more than just exercise, more than just banging out a handful of miles. It is a necessity akin to breathing. But even people who feel this way do not often go so far as to consider a marathon; even fewer consider ultramarathons. The amount of time required to train for a simple marathon alone scuttles many peoples’ fledgling desire or fleeting thought of running so far, never mind show more the staggering amount of time devoted to training for 100 mile or more runs. Those who persevere devote untold hours to the sport. And those who run ultramarathons must devote their entire lives and beings to training. In Derek Sherman’s debut novel, Race Across the Sky, Caleb Oberest is an elite ultramarathoner who lives and breathes running to the exclusion of everything else, including his long-estranged biotech salesman brother, Shane, until a young woman with a baby suffering from a fatal genetic condition breaks into his world and his heart, forcing him to consider that life is more than just running.

Caleb lives in a house run by his coach and trainer, Mack, a man whose techniques are strict, unorthodox, and non-negotiable. The rest of the Oberest family considers Caleb’s living situation to be cult-like given the fact that he quit his high paying, successful career to work at a copy shop, train for hours every day, share a house and a tiny room with other runners, abide by stringent rules not of his own devising, and all but severed ties with his parents and his brother in pursuit of a goal they don’t quite understand. Shane, by contrast, lives in San Francisco with his wife, working as a successful salesman in big pharma, and expecting his first child. But he is questioning certain things in his life when he receives a letter from his brother asking him to visit. At first he resists but he loves his brother and would like nothing more than to extricate Caleb from the Happy Trails house so in the last week before his son is born and as he changes jobs from big pharma to biotechnology, he goes out to Boulder and meets with Caleb, June, and baby Lily. When Caleb asks him to look into help for Lily, whose alpha-one antitrypsin deficiency has been attacking her lungs since birth, and tells Shane he'll leave Happy Trails if it could help Lily, Shane agrees and enlists the help of an outstanding scientist at his new firm. The problem is, what they are doing is illegal, but they don't have the luxury of time to go through the proper channels, nor would the firm research this rare disorder in any case.

As Shane risks his livelihood for the older brother he has always loved, Caleb continues living and working in Mack's house and under his rules. He is, of course, breaking the cardinal rule by loving June and Lily and Mack sees his attachment to them as jeopardizing Caleb's career as an ultramarathoner, something Mack has invested a lot of time in and refuses to relinquish. He is determined that Caleb will run and win the reinstated (and Mack engineered) Yosemite Slam, a race so dangerous it had been discontinued after the death of a well-known runner. In order to intensify Caleb's focus, he is banned from June and Lily, is told to quit his job at the copy shop, and to live, eat, and breathe Mack's training methods. And he does it. Because running is his whole life, his entire being found in the clarity of hours on the trail pushing through any pain that breaks into his consciousness. As Shane and the doctor race to find a way to cure Lily's disease, Caleb is also racing for his (and her) life.

Sherman has done a fantastic job writing the experience of running. He has captured the singular focus of these elite athletes and the intensity of their vision and drive. The scenes where Caleb is running are incredibly powerful with a very realistic mental turn inward to find the reserves and the strategies that keep him putting one foot in front of the other. The scenes with Shane and Prajuk working to find a way to control the disease for one small baby are thrilling in a different way but equally compelling. Having Shane, a sales guy rather than a scientist, involved in creating a lab and learning about the process for creating a biochemical drug, means the non-scientific reader also learns with Shane without it feeling forced. This is very definitely a plot driven novel; the reader turns the pages at a good clip to see whether Shane can beat Lily's disease and break his brother's addiction to running or if time will run out for all of them. The reading is very compelling and there's an element of thriller too but there's also the fascination of an ultra sport and the promise of biotechnology not just in the future but in the now. Sherman has written a gripping novel that raises many ethical questions which he must by necessity keep unanswered but which will stay with the reader and intrigue him or her long after the last page is turned. show less

It's hard to believe that this is the first book by Derek Sherman. I started this book earlier today and just finished this afternoon. Other than stopping for Advil since I had surgery earlier this week, I literally could not put this book down. To say this is a book about running would be wrong but I learned how it feels to be a runner and why people run until they practically disappear. This story about two brothers in a race for the survival to save a baby's life has everything I love in show more a book. It takes you out of your normal life and drops you into another life that feels just as real. I was lucky enough to have won this book as an Early Reviewer's copy and thank goodness I did. This book is due out July 30, 2013, mark your calendars and don't miss this book! show less

After September 11th, 2001 Caleb Oberest left his successful finance job in New York City to join a group of secluded ultramaraton runners living in Boulder, Colorado. Cut off from their families and much of society, members of the Happy Trails Running Club devote their lives to competing in 100-mile marathons through treacherous terrain. In San Francisco, Caleb's brother Shane is moving from selling pharmaceutical drugs to working with a biotechnology company when he hears from his brother show more for the first time in nearly ten years. Breaking one of the running club's rules, Caleb has fallen in love with another member and is desperate to find a cure for her infant daughter's fatal genetic disease, something Shane is unsure he is able to do with a new baby and family of his own.

While Race Across the Sky may seem like a novel about marathon runners and drug companies, its core is much deeper and more intricate. Sherman manages to use two science-centered topics to hold up the inner workings of his book; themes of family, morality, and truth, which feel incredibly human. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that he has a talent for finding and highlighting the beauty in small, seemingly insignificant moments that others might miss.

Despite the fact that I am definitely not a runner or a scientist, I found myself begging for just one more chapter through my whole reading experience. Though their situations and lives are extreme, Sherman's characters feel undoubtedly real and they are hard to let go of. Race Across the Sky is a wholly original, well researched and beautifully executed debut that should be in the hands of as many readers as possible.

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