I wish I wouldn’t have waited so long to read this wonderful book. I got behind in my ARC’s and need to do better this year. The atmosphere of the American west was felt on every page. What grabbed me the most, however, were the characters and their development. This is not an easy story, it deals with loss, pain, hardship, poverty - but a necessary one.

DNF @ 22%. Maybe the story just wasn’t for me at this time, I dunno. It just didn’t work for me. The writing felt somehow overdone, albeit beautiful at times, and non-dialogue tag gimmick always makes me roll my eyes.

“He knew then what the difference was between them and the others—they thought they were owed something.”

In the mountains of rural Montana, two families linked by tragedy ultimately come around to their own form of redemption.

It’s a place where the locals live in poverty, convinced that the government is out to get them and never afraid to take justice into their own hands. Many of them are fatherless, and the fathers that are still around live by their own warped code of ethics, which they pass down, inevitably, to their sons.

Wendell, whose father disappeared into the woods years ago, has managed to chart his own way, keeping mostly to himself. He’s got a depth to him that the other men around him don’t. When his cousin’s young son Rowdy comes suddenly into his care, Wendell tries his best to do right by him.

But there’s a fatalism he can’t seem to escape by virtue of who he is and where he comes from.

This is a solid debut that challenges preconceived notions. It’s gritty and bleak, but not without hope and tenderness. The characters are brought together in ways that make sense, but often feel a bit too obvious and contrived. I found myself much more interested in some of them than others.

This book snuck up on me in a way I wasn't expecting. The first part of the book was slow and I had a hard time getting invested. I wasn't really all that interested in the characters, didn't really pick up on the plot, etc. About 30% of the way in, though, I suddenly realized I was interested- I actually cared a lot about little Rowdy, found Wendell to be endearing and honest, and was curious to see where things would go. Needless to say, by the end of the book, I was in it. Though I don't think this book hit me as hard as it would someone who's familiar with the area and life in the American Midwest, I also don't think my lack of familiarity compromised my reading experience all that much. I loved the switching narrators (though I could've done without Verl) and especially loved how Wilkins saved Rowdy's narration until the last chapter. For me, the last chapter was the highlight of the book. It left me misty-eyed, and with a deeper understanding of Rowdy, the people who love him, and the community. This book is a sneaky one, and you may not realize you care until it's too late not to. I definitely recommend checking it out!

Published by Little, Brown and Company on March 12, 2019

Fall Back Down When I Die takes place in and near the Bull Mountains in Montana. It follows three primary characters who connect to each other in ways that become clear by the novel’s midpoint.

Vern is determined to live in the mountains as a free man after committing a crime. He tells his story in the form of a letter to his son. Most of Vern’s letters are rants about the perceived injustice that has been (or will be) done to him because of his insistence that he had the right to do as he pleased on his own land.

At some point after Wendell Newman becomes a young adult, his mother dies, leaving him a trailer and a mortgage on their mountain farmland. A social worker places a seven-year-old named Rowdy Burns with Wendell because Rowdy’s mother Lacy is Wendell’s cousin and was like a sister to him before she became a drug addict and then a prisoner. Rowdy was left alone in Lacy’s apartment for a week before social services took custody of him. Rowdy has developmental and behavioral issues that Wendell isn’t well equipped to handle, but he’s willing to do his best because he knows what it means to be neglected.

Gillian Houlton is a widow; her daughter Maddy is a high school senior. Gillian is an assistant principal in a town that consists of churches, saloons, and empty storefronts. She sees local kids growing up in rural poverty, living off rural welfare (farm programs, government grazing leases), joining self-proclaimed militias and White Identity movements, doing willfully stupid things that land them in jail or lead to an early death, proudly eschewing education and voting against their own interests. The principal, on the other hand, would rather sacrifice a kid than make redneck parents mad, because they might begin homeschooling and the school cannot sustain a significant loss of pupils.

Gillian’s husband, a game warden, was the victim of Bull Mountains violence a dozen years earlier. Gillian is sick of violent and ignorant men who believe they have the moral right to violate the law without considering the consequences to their families, to the environment, or to future generations. She sees eastern Montana (other than Billings) as “a sinkhole for taxpayer dollars, a sick sinkhole of environmental degradation, lack of education, liquor, methamphetamine, and broken families” while working Montanans who value education spend their time trying to clean up the mess. As a teacher, she’s frustrated with parents who condemn their children to a lifetime of ignorance and squalor. Anyone who gains an appreciation of the rest of world is condemned as “forgetting where they came from.”

Fall Back Down When I Die exposes the ignorant selfishness of people who think they are entitled by land ownership and mistaken notions of personal freedom to disregard laws that apply equally to every member of society. Yet the novel is not a political diatribe. Regardless of the merit that land use regulations have, they can make life for difficult for people whose businesses are affected by them, as the novel illustrates in the form of a very decent rancher who is just trying to make a good life for his family and employees.

The novel also has a lesson to teach regarding the peril of making assumptions about people because of how or where they live. Gillian has good reason to be angry with Montanans on the far right, but the story teaches that judging people based on stereotypes leads to misjudgments, no matter where the stereotypes fall on the political spectrum. Whether the hater is on the left or right, hate destroys.

Gillian and Wendell are constructed in satisfying depth, while characters who play significant but smaller roles are surprisingly complex. Perhaps the story’s message is a bit heavy-handed, but the message is important. The plot builds tension effectively until it reaches a surprising climax. The story is sad in the way that life is often sad, and hopeful in the way that life needs to be so that decent people don’t give up on humanity.

RECOMMENDED

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 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.

http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/03/fall-back-down-when-i-die.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2747938288
https://www.librarything.com/work/22656870/book/166661423
https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/1105541301091684352

Brilliant and poetic read that will take you into the intoxicating landscapes of Montana. Beautifully descriptive language of this novel will teleport you to the Midwest and allow you to immerse in the lives of the characters and connect with each one of them on a very personal level. This was a surprisingly delightful book that awoke different emotions in me: sadness, compassion, amazement, disgust, anger, empathy, and love for the land that I have never visited before. I highly recommend this book to anyone that can appreciate descriptive writing with strongly developed characters.
.
Thank you @netgalley, @littlebrown and the author, Joe Wilkins, for giving me an opportunity to read an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion.

'I should have been prepared in my head as I was in my hands. Let that be a lesson to you boy.'

Wendall Newman’s cousin Lacy finds herself in serious trouble for charges of possession of methamphetamine, child endangerment and willful neglect. He finds himself caring for her son Rowdy, a troubled 7-year-old little boy with communication delays. Barely getting by himself as a ranch hand, despite his rough surroundings and gruff appearance, Wendall comes to love his nephew and want nothing more than to do right by him. A certain type of poor all his life, he knows all too well the difficulties Rowdy faces, and the many ways the adults have failed him. With his father gone, Wendell was the sole heir of ruin, caring for his sick mother until her death, fatherless. Now he will do anything to give Rowdy the upbringing he deserves.

Verl Newman, Wendall’s father, long ago ran away into the Bull mountains, Montana after committing a murder. In the mean weeks that follow, he survives off the land and writes to his son in the school notebook he grabbed on the run ‘thinking to use for starting fires.’ With the feds on his tail, how could he possibly get this notebook, these words to his boy? “A boy should be able to hear his father always”, and yet they took even that from him. Wendall killed a wolf, against the laws, the government is a wolf itself, keeping a man from a living, forcing him to cower, beg. When a man comes and turns against his friend, his heart no longer brave, honest what can he expect but violence? What other choice did Verl have than save what was his family’s very livelihood? Not everyone sees Verl’s act as monstrous, some outright admire the courage of his convictions, which echos through the years within a resistance group.

Gillian works as the school counselor and tries to cope with her own loss, raising her daughter alone after her husband Kevin’s murder. Student Tavin, whose family is a part of the Bull Mountain Resistance, has been missing too many days of school, yet it’s impossible to gingerly approach his mother, on alert for any interference from officials. Gillian fears the boy will fall into a cycle of poverty, poisoned by the ‘rural stupidity’ of the men in his life, like so many others. She knows exactly the sort of horrors such beliefs can lead to, how many lives can be destroyed.



Maddy, Gillian’s daughter, comes to care for Rowdy, and has more in common with Wendall than she could have imagined. The three will need each other for their very survival as all the stories converge. Good and bad blends, and the bones of the dead rattle into the future of their unfortunate children. It’s a painful tale of family, poverty, the ugly history of inheritance and the tragedy of fate. Yes read it!

Publication Date: March 12, 2019

Little, Brown and Company

The first fiction book by award-winning Joe Wilkins is a powerful and raw look at the dry region out in Montana, a place seeped in hopelessness and history. This story and its characters seethe with quiet rage: the widow and teacher who drinks too much, who stuffs her memories deep, who wants to change the trajectory of children's lives; the orphaned farm hand, caught in bitterness, trying to do right by his young nephew, always one step behind success; the little boy, abandoned by his drug addicted mother, terrified, speechless, seeking safety; and the story threaded through all their lives, that of Verl, who creates his own rules and regulations to live by, who seeks freedom through hate and violence. The landscape becomes a major player as well, as Wilkins uses the description to put us in this beautiful yet lonely land, the writing never too sparse, never too verbose. I found this to be an extraordinarily compelling story, telling of an area that I know little of, a region full of powerful emotions that deserves to be heard. This book is a hidden gem, more than capable of winning awards if put into the right hands.

4 Brilliant Stars.

A Book WIth Heart and Absolutely Fabulous Characters. It doesn’t get much better!

When Wendell Newman is asked to take care of his seven year old nephew, he feels that he has no choice but to say yes. Rowdy, is mute and shows signs of aggression and abuse. Wendell is almost a kid himself and hardly has two pennies to rub together, yet Rowdy needs him.

There are certain things, that have been out of Wendell’s control all of his life, his family, his past and most of his own life choices. With Rowdy however, Wendell sees him, as a chance to do something good and right some wrongs. The bond that grows between these two is immediate and fierce. If only everything in life was that easy.

Wendell is a man who is all heart. He gave it to Rowdy the second he met him and even though Rowdy doesn’t speak a word, his affection is clear. Both of these young men grabbed my heart from the start. Though this book starts a little slow, and left me with many a question throughout, the payoff is worth it. “Fall Back Down When I Die” is a novel that evokes emotion, plain and simple. Emotion for Wendell and Rowdy, emotion for Gillian, the High School Principal / Special Ed Teacher, who wants to help others but whose past won’t always let her. These characters ate at me. Made me wonder what hard living and pasts that just don’t quit must be like.

Admittedly, there was a moment or two when my eyes filled with tears and when a couple of drops fell. When my heart caught in my throat, tight tight tight. Oh yeah. This one gets to you my friends. My suggestion of course, is to find out for yourselves. When I close my eyes, I’m right back there.. Wendell and Rowdy.. and my heart is full.

A huge thank you to NetGalley, Little Brown and Company and to Joe Wilkins for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Published on Goodreads and NetGalley on 1.13.19.
Will be published on Twitter and Amazon on 3.12.19.
Excerpt to be published on Instagram.