Joe Wilkins, a fellow University of Idaho Creative Writing MFA alum, has a new novel, The Entire Sky, coming out July 2^nd (which is the day I am publishing this review). Like his memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and his first novel, Fall Back Down When I Die (read my review of it here), the new novel features stunning, precise language and a deep evocation of place. 

It is the story of Justin, a teenage runaway, Rene Bouchard, an aging rancher mourning the loss of his wife and the growing distance between him and his grown children, and Lianne, Rene’s daughter and a woman struggling to find connection and meaning in her marriage, her work, and her relationship with her father. When Justin’s flight brings him to Rene’s Montana sheep ranch, the three discover an unexpected opportunity to redefine family and home. But Justin can’t outrun his troubled past, and it threatens to destroy the life he’s created with Rene and Lianne and wrest him from the place he’s come to call his own.

When it comes to bringing the contemporary American West to life on the page, Wilkins’ work is some of the best I’ve read. His descriptions of rural Montana, from the plains to the mountains to the tiny, rural town of Delphia to the much larger Billings, sing with specific detail and lyric imagery. Depictions of sheep ranching ring with both grittiness and wonder, reflecting the awe inspired by work that ties people so deeply to the natural world, to birth and death, blood and sky.

Justin’s reactions to these cycles reflect Wilkins’ keen eye and ear for character development and dialogue. A city kid, Justin is amazed but also sometimes appalled as he learns to help Rene with lambing. (A scene that describes the necessity of “jacketing” a bum lamb is especially powerful.) His spoken responses are often inelegant, but beneath the cursing are a tenderness and authenticity that speak to the character’s deepest nature. In another story, an old rancher like Rene, who has distinct ideas about what is right and wrong, might take the boy to task for his language, but in Wilkins’ hands, Rene’s taciturn non-reaction comes through as a form of nurturing. He allows Justin to be who he is while also providing the space and structure for the boy to explore what it means to be responsible to and for other living beings.

Likewise, Lianne and Rene’s relationship is full of complexity and truth. The oldest of four and the only girl, Lianne is also the only one of Rene’s children who lived up to his expectations and hopes for working the ranch. But she left home to attend college, got married, and moved away. Now, in the wake of her mother’s death, she’s trying to understand a pull to return the Montana she once knew even as she wants more from her relationship with her father and can clearly see the hard edges and limits of life in such a place. As she and Rene try to reckon with the legacy of a past family tragedy, the reader aches with all they cannot say and all they manage to convey.

The wholeness of all its characters is perhaps my favorite part of this novel, with the beauty of the language and the descriptions of landscapes tied for a close second. The supporting characters feel real (and if there was ever a better name for a power-hungry land baron than Orley Pinkerton, I’d like to hear it.) Their hopes and troubles add layers and nuance to the community of Delphia, harmonizing with Justin’s, Rene’s, and Lianne’s as they emerge as allies and adversaries. 

Ultimately, The Entire Sky takes a hard look at failures in our society that allow so many of us to become wandering, broken survivors, each in our unique way. Through Justin, it asks us to consider what has happened and what will happen to boys who have been left outside the circle of love and family that should support their growth into thoughtful men who can claim their own authenticity rather than being defined by cultural morays of masculinity. 

Many novels about the contemporary West lean hard into bitterness and bleakness, perhaps as part of an effort to demythologize the West and challenge oversimplified, romanticized versions of its past and present. Notably here, Wilkins doesn’t shy away from that work or from harsh realities, but his novel also values the beauty of the land and the humanity of the people who live there. 

Given the sharp-eyed crafting of Justin’s character and those of the people surrounding him, it would be naive to wrap this story up with a “happily-ever-after.” But without looking away from the likely outcome of Justin’s trajectory, Wilkins offers the possibility of hope, a version of the boy’s future that could, just maybe, be true in a world so filled with violence and beauty.

The Entire Sky is available July 2^nd, 2024. Check your local bookstore to buy a copy or order the book online from Third Street Books, a bookstore located in Wilkins’ stomping grounds in Oregon. Also, you can learn more about the book and about Wilkins’ work on his website. 

I recently read Joe Wilkin’s 2019 novel Fall Back Down When I Die, and I was struck by his powerful and clear-eyed rendering of the American West. He is a fellow University of Idaho Creative Writing alum, and I first encountered his work through his first full-length poetry collection, Killing the Murnion Dogs. It was a pleasure to read his first novel, and I soon found myself lost in the story.

The novel is set in contemporary Montana and delves into the inner lives of Wendell Newman, a young ranch hand, and the seven-year-old boy he suddenly finds himself responsible for when his cousin is arrested for drug use and child neglect. With no other family to take in the boy, Wendell is charged with raising him, and the two soon form an unlikely bond. But with the state’s first legal wolf hunt in thirty years looming, long simmering political tensions in the small Western community threaten to unearth and revive a violent past that tangles the deaths of Wendell’s father and a local game warden.

Throughout, Wilkins’ training as a poet shines through in his prose, a precision of language that captures the beautiful, the violent, and the mundane in equal measures. I could taste and smell the Montana he renders, and though it is not the American West I would like to believe in, it is a vision of the West that feels true from the first word to the last as Wilkins’ explicates the complicated legacy of a culture predicated on the hollow promises and violence inherent in Westward Expansion.

He also withholds judgement, depicting all of his characters with compassion and an eye to detail akin to that of a skilled portrait painter. He allows the reader to make their own decisions about the moral and philosophical questions that shade the story. I found myself most compelled by Wendell’s struggle to make sense of his life (a recently dead mother, a pile of debt, an anemic ranch, a long absent father) and to decide what sort of man he wants to be as he shoulders responsibility for a child left mute and traumatized by the short-comings of the adults in this broken world.

Perhaps the aspect of Wilkins’ writing that most intrigues me is his ability to explore the darkness present in the rural West while also demonstrating a love for the landscape and the people who inhabit it. He meditates on the nature of masculinity in this place, an experience I, as a woman, have only ever been able to witness from the outside. Similarly, his unflinching examination of the costs of the poverty and violence bred by the complex history of the American West shows me a side of my place of belonging that I have rarely experienced first hand — though my grandfathers and maternal grandmother all grew up in abject poverty in this region, by the time I was born, my family was part of the educated, professional class in Wyoming, and that background shaped the lens through which I see the state and landscape. Therefore, I am grateful to writers and artists like Wilkins, who pull back the veil on my more idealized version of the American West. Without this perspective, my understanding of my choice to continue to live and love this place is incomplete.

In the end, that is the greatest achievement of Wilkins’ novel — it is a story that strives to provide a complete picture of a community and its history and explicate how those forces shape the people who inhabit it.

For more about Joe Wilkins and his work, visit his website: https://joewilkins.org/ 

I found these two interviews with The Write Question on Montana Public Radio to be particularly enlightening as I digested Fall Back Down When I Die: https://beta.prx.org/stories/96338-an-interview-with-joe-wilkins; https://beta.prx.org/stories/282384 

One of my favorite bands is the Turnpike Troubadours, a Red Dirt group from Tahlequah, Oklahoma. All members are talented – singer and guitarist Evan Felker, bassist R.C. Edwards, fiddler Kyle Nix, guitarist Ryan Engleman, drummer Gabe Pearson, and steel guitar and accordion player Hank Early. 

Their music blends distinct instrumentation with impressively descriptive lyrics. The music alone catches the ear and can speak to a certain mood even if you’re not following the lyrics. For example, “Gin, Smoke, Lies” is a favorite of mine to lift weights to or to crank out a hard swim set while “7 & 7” and “Down on Washington” make me tap my fingers against the steering wheel. 

But you’re missing out if you’re not paying attention to their lyrics, which bear the hallmark of what I consider great writing – they make me wish I’d written them myself. This line from “Whole Damn Town” makes me nod my head with appreciation (and a little envy) every time I hear it: “Well, the music pours out on the street/ Just as clean and cool as a cotton sheet.” I mean, THAT is a truly great simile based on clear yet fresh imagery. 

The combination of great music and outstanding lyrics creates songs that get stuck in my head in the best possible way. Right now, I’m humming “Leaving and Lonely,” like I do for at least a week every time I hear it.

They also do some interesting things in terms of story-telling – many of their songs tell stories that make me want the novelized version, but the Troubadours don’t stop there. Rather, they build a world across albums with reoccurring and distinct characters like the gritty Jimmy and the sexy Lori. 

And the stories they tell are often deep and moving. The song the “Bird Hunters” tells an entire story about love, loss, and how you both can and cannot come home again in a tight 5:10. Not many short stories could pull this tale and these themes off half as well. “The Housefire” accomplishes a similarly admirable task – the title gives you the main plotline, but don’t assume you know how it is going to go down. The song makes me want to sing along and appalls me with the truth of how fast our fortunes can turn and gives me hope all at the same once.

As I may have mentioned already elsewhere on my website, I create “character soundtracks” for my main characters and then listen to each one when I am working from that character’s point of view. I’ll just link to the Troubadours songs on my playlists below in in a bulleted list, but you should also know that there have been countless days where I just listen to their albums on a loop as I work. 

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can give to the Turnpike Troubadours is to say that they are artists who inspire me to continue my own creative pursuits. Their music makes me want to write and listening to it before or while I work helps me see my characters even more clearly as real, complicated people. In other words, I enjoy the Turnpike Troubadours work for its own sake while also believing that their music makes me a better writer. And because I believe that stories, no matter their format, tell us a little bit about what it means to be human and how to go about living in this wild world, that means their music makes me understand how to be a more nuanced and authentic human being.

So, I’m sending a big “thank you” their way and encouraging you to check them out: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1YSA4byX5AL1zoTsSTlB03?si=EYqGQWRXTLWkuRAdVzOWAQ.

List of Turnpike Troubadour Songs on my character soundtracks:

• Down on Washington

• Call a Spade a Spade

• 7 & 7

• The Funeral

• Whole Damn Town

• Every Girl

• Gin, Smoke, Lies

• Kansas City Southern

*I am not affiliated with the Turnpike Troubadours in any way and garner no monetary or other tangible benefit if you listen to or purchase their music.

Because I am a writer, people often ask, “What is your favorite book?” And thus begins an If You Give a Mouse a Cookie situation: Because I am a writer, I love to read (or perhaps it is more accurate to say, because I love to read, I am writer), and because I love to read, I love a great many books. Because I love a great many books, I struggle to give a succinct answer to that question, and because I struggle with that question, people walk away from our conversation with a stew of titles from a vast majority of genres and probably very little idea what books have influenced me as a writer, and because they have very little idea of what books have influenced me, they probably have an unclear idea of what sort of writings I actually author. Therefore, I would like to begin sharing with you not only the books that have inspired me as a writer and an artist but also movies, music, and other forms of art that spark for me.

So, to kick it off, there are several books that I nearly always name, and the one that nearly always comes up first is Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. Though not as well-known as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, this experimental, epic novel has inspired me more.

On the face of it, Notion is about the struggles that the Stampers, an Oregon logging family, face as they come under increasing pressure to change their operation and unionize. Against that broader external conflict, long-smoldering resentments and longings within the family come to a head. At the heart of these tensions is the rivalry between Leland Stamper and his older brother Hank. In the balance hangs the future of the logging operation, the love of Hank’s wife, Vivian, and the pride, independence, and internal fortitude of both men.

The first time I read the novel, I was in high school and had never encountered anything as experimental. Kesey weaves together strands of third-person narrative with direct streams-of-consciousness from multiple characters, switching between the main story and flashbacks and character perspectives without notice beyond shifts in font (from regular font to italics to parentheses and back, for example). Major characters and minor characters alike break into the main narrative to offer their thoughts and opinions, though we don’t always know who is speaking. If this sounds confusing, it is, at least at first. I came close to giving up on the book that first time through, but something pulled me along, a thrumming, urgent insistency though the story unfolds slowly. As I learned and have tried to explain to everyone to whom I have recommended Notion, it is a book that teaches you to read it, and by the end, I am always so swept up in the drama of the tale that I feel my way through those point of view and tense shifts without a hitch. In fact, the experimental nature of the book serves the story, making it more nuanced, sweeping, and specific all at the same time.

Each time I read the novel, I am struck by a deeper and deeper appreciation for the techniques Kesey used — the plot drives along, relentless, unyielding, until the reader is begging the characters to “Stop!” or “Just say something, anything, that is true and honest and meaningful right now!” The slippery perspective and timeline add layers upon layers of richness to that plot as we see how years of family history — generations of it — and myriad and often myopic individual experiences have brought everyone in the Stamper family to the brink. Further, the novel captures Oregon logging company with depth and breadth, taking the reader inside the landscapes and culture of the place like all great deep maps of place do.

Because the book requires more of its reader than passive consumption, it engages me on a profound level, leaving me feeling as if I have experienced not only Hank’s story or Leland’s or Viv’s, but all of them along with countless others. There is no doubt in my mind that Sometimes a Great Notion inspired me to write my own stories about family, belonging, and place. That my first book is deeply place-based in Wyoming’s Red Desert and focuses on the challenges faced by a long-time ranching family as the two grown brothers fall in love with the same woman comes as no surprise. That is not to say that my work is derivative of Kesey’s — our stories are different, and while my style owes homage to Notion, it is not an imitation of his but something of my own making. Our themes also differ, though I’ll leave it to readers to parse that out and see if they agree with me. But Kesey’s novel grabbed me when I fifteen and has never let me go entirely. It is a part of me now, one of the many shifting voices in my own head that pushes me to find my own true, authentic voice and to tell true, authentic stories with it. Only Ken Kesey could have written Sometimes a Great Notion, and I hope that my own work rises to that same great standard.