Published by ‎ Little, Brown and Company on July 2, 2024

The Entire Sky is a story of choices, primarily the choice between suicide and endurance, but also the choice to notice when people need help or to leave them unseen, to help those we see or to condemn them. The story is heartwarming because good people dealing with tough circumstances, including poor decisions they've made in the past, decide to make the right choices.

Justin lived in Seattle. He wasn’t big enough to protect his mother from her boyfriend’s physical abuse, but he tried. His mother didn’t have the physical strength to protect Justin from her boyfriend’s retaliation and didn’t have the emotional strength to make her boyfriend leave. So Justin left instead, running away at first, later going to Montana to live with his mother’s brother Heck.

As the novel begins, Justin is running away again, this time to avoid the consequences of caving in Heck’s head with a maul. Justin’s backstory leading to that violent moment is interwoven with the story that unfolds in the present.

A key to Justin’s personality is his physical resemblance to Kurt Cobain and his love of Nirvana’s music. Apart from committing a murder (and nobody will be sorry about Heck’s death), Justin is polite, kind, and respectful — a young man readers will easily like.

With his guitar and a backpack, Justin hitchhikes to Billings, where he earns a few dollars busking. He doesn’t understand why people appreciate his “tribute” to Cobain until he reads about Cobain’s death in a newspaper. Justin’s travels end when a rancher finds him hiding in a bunkhouse and leaves him breakfast.

The rancher is Rene Bouchard. He’s old and battling pain in his knees, but he still tends his flock of sheep. His wife has just died. His daughter Lianne returned to Montana to help her father care for her dying mother. Lianne teaches at a community college but has separated from her husband and isn’t sure she wants to return to her former job, particularly after she shags Ves, her old friend from high school.

Justin is astonished at how easily he fits in at Rene’s ranch. He loves watching lambs being born although he is appalled by the harsh realities of Rene's business. Rene and Lianne display decency and kindness that Justin has rarely experienced. Ves’ daughter Amy shares Justin’s appreciation of Nirvana’s music. Justin is even thinking of enrolling in school under a new name, but remaking a life is never easy. Justin will have more than his share of troubles to overcome as the novel moves toward a resolution.

Suicide is the novel’s primary theme. Cobain’s is probably the most notable celebrity suicide of his generation, the most notable in American life since Hemingway and Marilyn Monroe. Rene is planning to end his life when Justin’s sudden arrival causes him to postpone his death. Justin reminds Rene of his son Franklin, who also committed suicide. The novel asks why so many boys choose to take their own lives, why American society fails to identify and help them.

Prejudice against gay men, harbored by Montanans who think of themselves as cowboys, is a secondary theme. Justin isn’t gay, but his long hair and earrings make him gay in the eyes of rednecks. Men like Heck who are ashamed of their attraction to other men use violence as a substitute for self-awareness. Franklin was gay and was targeted by other boys (and even some girls) despite his efforts to hide his sexual identity.

A third theme is the difficult relationship between fathers and sons, particularly when fathers (like Rene) find it difficult to express (or even feel) their emotions. Rene blames himself for Franklin’s suicide, as does Lianne for not responding more urgently to Franklin’s cries for help. They both regret that they didn’t listen to him.

Joe Wilkins conveys the unassuming lives of his Montana characters, finding virtue in their hard work and unselfish lives. Without wasting words, he strings together robust sentences to tell a powerful story. He calls attention to all the boys we don’t notice, the boys who succeed at being too small to see, the boys who drift, who sleep in the weeds or in the back seat of an abandoned car or, if they are very lucky, on a friend’s couch for a few nights. The story reminds us that we can look away when we see them, or we can see them as possibilities.

I didn’t try to guess how the story would end but I dreaded a realistic outcome. Wilkins satisfied me by offering two endings, perhaps to emphasize that life is about possibilities and choices. One is a little sad but far from hopeless. The one I preferred is closer to happy. Either one is a fitting conclusion to a powerful story.

RECOMMENDED

Justin is a kid who looks like Kurt Cobain his idol and plays a pretty good guitar to make a few bucks, but he is a child lost in the world not by his own choosing more to the fact that he has mother who cannot handle stability and makes poor choices in boyfriends. Justin is shipped off to family for his own protection but is far from it and he has to make a choice that is life altering leads him on the run. He finds in the middle of nowhere Montana and place that is really nothing more than farm and ranch country. He finds refuge for a few hours' sleep out of the weather and crosses paths with a caring soul who has recently lost his wife. This meeting comes at the right time for both Rene Bouchard and Justin as Rene needs help during lambing season. It is moving to read how the boy learns about life on a ranch and coping with life and death. Besides losing his wife Rene his also coping with distance of a daughter who is analyzing her own relationships and work and a possible lost love and the regrets of not reaching out to a brother who is gone way to early. A son that I believe Rene seen aspects in Justin another lost soul. This was a definite five star read and would recommend it for a great read.

Say 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 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.

’Say 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?’

Set in rural Montana, this is a story of those who choose another way of life, of living on the edges, and yet standing out because he chooses to live a different way, and dress a different way, than those around him. He isn’t out to change anyone else’s life, so why are the others so determined to make his life miserable?

At times, this is gut wrenching, heartbreaking, but also so relatable. It reminded me of a girl I barely knew in Jr. high school, a girl whose story broke my heart one day when out of the blue she shared her story in a whisper. Unforgettable.

There’s very little happiness in this, although there are moments of kindness, this story is also very dark at times. Justin is a teenager whose father is not in the picture, and he longs for a life that seems unavailable to him, not simply because of his father, but he is tormented for the way others see him as too different. He longs for a place and people who would accept him, but doesn’t believe he will ever find what he is looking for.

The place he can call home.



Pub Date: 02 Jul 2024


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

Due to the language, lack of dialogue and differences from the description, I did not enjoy reading this book. Others may enjoy reading it more than I did.

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Thank you NetGalley, author Joe Wilkins, and Little, Brown, and Company for allowing me to read this incredible novel in advance. The Entire Sky is powerfully dramatic and filled with poetic language that I devoured from beginning to end. Set in rural, beautiful Montana, and filled with scenery that draws readers way in, this is a story of lost souls searching for home and striving to find family on their individual paths towards healing. The Entire Sky is remarkably unforgettable. The characters possess depth and stay with you even when the story tragically ends. Teenager Justin tugs at the heartstrings as he navigates profound themes (absent fathers, abuse, family dysfunction, safety, longing, toxic masculinity, teenage angst, love, fighting for your land) and his world collides with recently widowed rancher Rene Bouchard and his daughter, Lianne on their family ranch. Justin’s search for belonging and peace is somehow poignant and heartbreaking, as his past threatens every fiber of his being. Will he find solace in the Bouchard family ranch? Will Rene reconcile with his daughter Lianne before time runs out? Rowdy, Wendell, Viv, and Franklin also leave emotional impressions as characters...and the ending! This novel is unlike anything I have read in a long time, especially in regards to the emotional character connections and depictions of the vast Montana sky. “These things we’re always carrying. That carry us.” Amazing novel. I will read anything this author writes and caanot wait for his next novel. 4.5/5

A love song to the Montana landscape, this heavily drawn yet affecting tale pits sweet, sometimes misunderstood characters against one-dimensional thugs (generally male). The good guys have upstanding moral values but usually regrets, too. It’s all rather simple, however Wilkins delivers his parable with commitment and a painterly eye, as well, unfortunately, as a taste for creating verbs out of nouns. I suspect this will be a popular hit.

I really tried to read this book based on the description. Halfway through I gave up because there was hardly any dialogue and I couldn’t figure out what was going on and I had a hard time following the characters.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for the chance to read and review 'The Entire Sky'
by Joe Wilkins.

I very much enjoyed this novel.

A young Kurt Cobain-loving and lookalike drifter arrives - through a series of events and an already tough life - at the ranch of recently widowed Montanan, Rene Bouchard, whose family has long moved away and who, himself, feels he has very little left to live for.

Hot on Justin's heels arrives Lianne, the much beloved only daughter of Rene and his wife Viv who, herself, is lost and, having temporarily left her husband and two boys behind in Spokane, is looking for clarity and direction and not really expecting it to find it in her childhood home.

What follows is a meeting of ages, generations, and lifestyles in which the superficially very different experiences of Rene and his family and the teenaged Justin are shown to be not that different at all. Throughout the telling of the tale, a Bouchard family tragedy emerges, one which connects much of the emotion and experience of the characters.

Although sometimes a little purple - especially in descriptions of nature and landscapes - the writing in the book is lovely and evocative.

Highly recommended.

Absolutely loved this intense book about resilience, family, abuse, and reconciliation. Justin, who looks a little like Kurt Cobain, runs away from an abusive household and winds up at the Bouchard ranch. Rene just lost his wife and is glad to have to help with his sheep and horses. As Justin finds himself learning from Rene, Rene and his daughter Lianne begin to mend their relationship. Lianne says to Justin we need to find a way for you to stay. After a branding session at a friend’s, Justin is threatened by a man down the road and hurts him. Justin runs away taking Rene’s truck and dog. Will Justin return to Rene’s ranch where he knows this is the place that felt like home?

Overall this book was not what I expected. I thought that it would be a story about rural America but I and left with something to be desired. Something about the dialogue and the characteristics of the situation did not sit right with me.

Engaging and immersive. A recommended purchase for collections where American literary fiction is popular.