Fall Back Down When I Die by Joe Wilkins

Fall Back Down When I Die Reviews

• 
  Orsodimondo

  ASCIA DI GUERRA
  
  
  Foto Dick Hoskins: Unsplash.
  
  Tutti i capitoli prendono il titolo dai nomi dei personaggi protagonisti, ne vengono scanditi.
  Verl, l’unico che racconta in prima persona, a brevi, spesso brevissimi capitoli – in prima persona perché si tratta di un diario, scritto nelle difficoltà estreme della sua fuga, braccato dalle legge sulle Bull Mountains – e che andando avanti si capisce essere il padre di Wendell, altro protagonista, poco più che ventenne, cowboy salariato, lui come Gillian, vicepreside e insegnante, anche di recupero e sostegno, raccontati invece da narratore extradiegetico.
  Ma, tra i personaggi determinanti ne aggiungerei anche alcuni che non regalano titolo a nessun capitolo: per esempio, il piccolo Rowdy, figlio di Lacy, la cugina di Wendell, che è finita in prigione per spaccio e per avere abbandonato il suo bimbo di sette anni, autistico, forse epilettico, che Wendell prende in casa – bè, si fa presto a dire casa: trattasi di roulotte, di un trailer nel quale Wendell è nato e cresciuto – e man mano impara a sentire il bambino come suo.
  E, Maddy la figlia adolescente di Gillian, che a stento ricorda Kevin, suo padre, morto quando lei era ancora piccola.
  
  
  La terra dei lupi.
  
  Al momento della morte Kevin aveva trentasette anni, innamoratissimo della sua famiglia, e del suo lavoro di guardiacaccia (in un territorio dove la caccia è attività tra le principali, e la si vorrebbe senza regole, vedi il lupo del titolo italiano – quello originale è Fall Back Down When I Die).
  Trentasette, gli stessi anni che aveva Verl quando si è dato alla macchia: e infatti, i due si conoscevano bene, erano amici d’infanzia, legati da un patto di sangue.
  Adesso la vedova di Kevin, Gillian, ne ha quasi cinquanta, e fa ancora molta fatica a gestire la perdita, il lutto del marito, e la gestione in solo della figlia.
  Mentre Wendell adesso ne ha ventiquattro, dodici di più di quando suo padre si lasciò dietro moglie, figlioletto, trailer, per andarsi a nascondere sulle montagne inseguito dalle forze dell’ordine.
  
  
  Ma qui i cowboy più che i cavalli usano le moto da cross.
  
  Cos’è che li lega, che li tiene uniti, che man mano si dipana e li avviluppa, tra agnizioni, speranze, progetti falliti alla partenza, assenza di futuro, e nuove morti?
  Due aspetti principali.
  Il primo è l’abilità di racconto di Wilkins, cresciuto a pane e scrittura, docente della stessa: la sua struttura narrativa, l’intelaiatura del suo romanzo piace molto alla gente di cinema. Non so se i diritti siano opzionati o meno: ma posso dire che la trama, per come è costruita e per come si sviluppa ha molte assonanze con l’arte dello schermo, sia grande che piccolo. Che magnifica miniserie ne verrebbe fuori! Da mettere i brividi a Kevin Costner e alla sua divertente Yellowstone.
  
  
  
  Il secondo aspetto è l’ambientazione, il Montana dove tutto si svolge, altro protagonista.
  Uno di quegli stati che sta diventando sempre più importante in tempo d’elezioni.
  Uno di quegli stati americani dove la wilderness è preponderante: ma l’uomo bianco è arrivato da tempo, e, prima ha respinto e fatto pressoché scomparire l’uomo “rosso” nativo (giunto dall’Asia quarantamila anni prima attraverso lo stretto di Bering?), poi ha segato, estirpato, costruito, asfaltato, cementificato, scavato, fatto esplodere, eretto barriere e dighe, deviato corsi d’acqua, distrutto, prodotto scarti spazzatura cenere fumi gas liquami veleni vari (che si sa sempre da dove iniziano, ma mai dove finiscono)…
  Insomma, la classica trafila dell’umanità da qualche secolo a questa parte.
  E la wilderness se ne è risentita: è diventata più aspra, secca, desolata, inquinata (bellissimo momento la descrizione del crepaccio nel canyon che da generazioni funge da discarica: Wilkins tiene a freno il suo afflato per la natura devastata, e molto matter-of-fact elenca tutto quanto scaricato e “conservato” laggiù).
  Gli inverni sono sempre più corti, le estati sempre più lunghe. E le mezze stagioni? Non ci sono più, signora mia.
  
  
  
  Questi soggetti (pseudo) umani del Montana tendono a votare sempre repubblicano. Tendono a credersi anarchici, ma dell’anarchia nulla hanno capito: il loro senso della comunità è sotto zero, stravince un individualismo sfrenato, sbandierato e protetto da grande (ab)uso di armi da fuoco: vanno in giro con la pistola nella fondina, pugnalaccio, e fucile con mirino telescopico. Quando non armi a mitraglia.
  È la classica fetta di popolazione che ha sofferto da bestia durante i due mandati di Obama - passando il tempo a rimpiangere Bush jr, che per i loro gusti è stato fin troppo legalitario - e costruendo il futuro successo del pennellone col ciuffo (per noi italiani minima consolazione al ventennio berlusconiano: tra le altre cose, ad accomunare le due infauste presidenze un uso “selvaggio” del parrucchiere). Obama e le sue due presidenze (il romanzo si svolge durante la prima) li ha fatti sentire minacciati, attaccati, precari: non è bastato l’alcol, il piombo, il fumo, il vomito, le droghe farmaceutiche spacciate per antidolorifici calmanti sonniferi: occorre armarsi e reagire.
  
  
  Tra gli animali più cacciati, e cucinati, ci sono i wapiti, questa sottospecie di cervo.
  
  E allora ecco spiegati i lupi del titolo: il governo federale li ha introdotti e protetti, questi bipedi si sentono in pericolo, le mandrie (che non hanno e vorrebbero avere) li percepiscono come minaccia. Devono difendersi: ma, strana anomalia, questi autoproclamatisi anarchici hanno comunque grandi aspettative nei confronti del potere, statale e/o federale, che invece vorrebbero abolire, aspettano sempre di ricevere qualcosa.
  Dopo decenni viene indetta la prima caccia legale al selvaggio canino: per molti di questi di questi (pseudo) umani del Montana diventa l’occasione per fare come quelli che con pelliccia e corna in testa hanno dato l’assalto alla Capitol Hill qualche mese fa.
  Magistrale come, certo non per primo e neppure per ultimo, Wilkins demolisce il cosiddetto mito americano.
  
  
• 
  Susanne

  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.
  
• 
  Brenda ~Traveling Sisters Book Reviews

  A Rugged western, a ranch hand and a traumatized boy connected by an unexpected bond, a grieving assistant principal and her daughter and the violence that connects them all
  
  Fall Back Down When I Die by Joe Wilkins is a western like story that captures the rugged and beautiful setting in Bull Mountains in eastern Montana and the conflicts that tie the people of the town together.
  
  The story starts off slow as we get to know our main characters here through their different POV. Each with their own conflicts that connect them together and to the land around them. I was quickly drawn into the bond between the characters that won my heart right from the start. The story slowly unfolds until chaos erupts and violence threatens to tear them apart. The pace picks up and felt a bit rushed for me and I would of like to have seen more time spend on this part of the story. Despite this, in the end, it all came together well for me allowing me to feel those emotions I love to feel from an emotionally layered story. I highly recommend!
  
  Thank you to Little Brown and Company and Hachette Canada for my copy to read and review.
  
• 
  Paltia

  A story that broke my heart. Wilkins writes from the heart of a poet. Here you will enter the rugged and endless space of eastern Montana and meet characters haunted by their memories and loss. Few books can make a place so thoroughly real. A father on the run listens for the sound of a wolf howling at the moon while his empty belly howls in refrain. His son, has a 7 year old mute child brought to his door. The son then becomes much like his missing father to the abandoned child. Many layers going on here. There is the sound of gunshots and then comes the hush between them. An unnervingly realistic and beautiful book.
• 
  Aga Durka

  4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  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, Little, Brown Company and the author, Joe Wilkins, for giving me an opportunity to read an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion 💕
• 
  Melissa Crytzer Fry

  This book… What a masterful blend of character-driven, literary fiction (with poetic, melt-in-your-mouth sentences). Combined with the intense pacing of more commercial fiction, this is a book you don’t want to set down.
  
  This novel was remarkable in several ways, and my first thought was that American journalists should read this fiction and take note. Why? Because this writing exemplifies perfect balance (Back in the day, when I studied journalism, we were taught that our journalistic stories were to be unbiased and cover both sides of a story). Well, Joe Wilkins achieves what most journalists simply can’t today. He presents two sides of a difficult story with empathetic eyes and incredible skill – fiction, yes, but rooted in reality.
  
  If you had told me I would ever feel empathy toward law-breakers, or wolf hunters, I would have laughed in your face. Or more likely, I’d have pounced, citing any manner of ecological study I'd read about the importance of wolves, maintaining balance, respecting the earth. And yet, in one character in particular, there was dastardliness, but also compassion and humanity. Few authors can pull this off – the ability to characterize so well that even the seemingly least-human are made human. I cannot say enough.
  
  This story spoke to me for multiple reasons: 1) my pro-wolf stance, 2) the poetic language, and 3) the fact that despite living in Arizona – versus Montana where the book takes place – the same divides over ranching, conservation, and government exist in my state. (I’ve been to conservation meetings where angry ranchers far outnumbered tree huggers). My county experiences the same inabilities to see one another’s perspectives.
  
  I confess that I related most to Gillian (minus the hunting), but I appreciated the way the author handled even that – with grace and honesty. If you love landscape descriptions and appreciate getting into the heads of your characters for an emotional ride, this book simply will not disappoint. At its heart, this is a story of love: for family, for land, for a way of life, for wilderness. And a story that questions entitlement and honor.
  
  Just one question, though: Why did this book not get the publicity it deserved? So disappointing when this happens to uber-talented authors. Wilkins has written poetry as well, which I plan to check out! In addition to my highlighted Kindle selections marked as visible (right under my star rating), a few other samples of the writing:
  
  The land itself animated sorrow and anger, birthed and cradled and raised up failure and fear, a raw and righteous violence.
  
  The clouds blackened and lifted and thinned to nothing. Then the nail holes of stars, the brittle, copper-smelling cold, the dark, hard wind.
  
  Tavin couldn’t hear much of anything save the whir of his own breath. Like bees in me, he thought. Wasps.
• 
  Lisa

  [3.5] The title describes this novel well. It is tragic. Wilkins writes vividly about the harsh and stunning Montana landscape as well as the division between its people. My son and I read it as a buddy read and expected a fast paced novel - but this is a slow building character study.
• 
  Amanda

  Of course it broke my heart ♥️
• 
  Andrew Unger

  For all the think-pieces written on Trump's America, Wilkins' novel finally gives voice, breath, and pathos to the real people living out their lives in one of the most misunderstood regions in America. There are politics in Joe Wilkins' Fall Back Down When I Die, but only because, in today's Mountain West, politics are an inescapable tension. For readers of Ron Rash, Brad Watson, Jim Harrison, and Michael Farris Smith, comes Wilkins. This story of a young ranch-hand set with the impossible task of raising a young boy in a place caught in an ideological war simmering just on the verge of violence is woven masterfully into the story of a bleeding heart liberal teacher doing her best to do her best in a place resistant to change. Where you might fear and long for climactic violence as their lives come crashing together -- perhaps to justify a fear of this place and these people -- Wilkins withholds. What he offers instead is a seamlessly beautiful emotional arc anchored deep in the hard-dirt of this dispassioned and heart-worn country.
• 
  Libbie Hawker (L.M. Ironside)

  I haven't reviewed a book on Goodreads in years because, to be honest, I kind of hate Goodreads. But I just finished this one and it is by far one of the finest works of American literature I've ever read. I'll add more thoughts later. Working on a blog post about it.
  
  Review finished. From my blog at libbieslist.com:
  
  I grew up in the Rocky Mountain West, so the setting appealed to me. I'm not a big fan of "Wayward child and adult in tricky situation form unexpected bond" stories--kids just aren't really my jam, to be honest--but I was willing to give the book a try anyway because all those other elements had snagged me. But from the moment I actually started reading, I understood that this book was more than merely "good." It was (and is) truly great. A great work of literature in every sense: stirring, affecting, poignant; handling with nuance a very fraught, difficult subject that nevertheless must be handled and confronted head-on. This book is about so much more than an adult and a child forging an unlikely bond--though the relationship between Wendell and Rowdy is central to the plot and is important (and much more moving than I expected it to be.)
  
  Joe Wilkins' debut novel is really about the clash between Red and Blue America. It's about the places in the American landscape where liberal and conservative ideals smash into one another head-on and the particular kinds of tensions that unique conflict creates. It's a tension I am familiar with, having grown up in that sort of place; I can confirm that Wilkins represents the culture of the Rockies with heart-rending accuracy; he is clearly a person who also knows the place and its problems intimately. Set sometime during the Obama administration, this book is about a whole and complete picture of poverty and despair in the Western states--how poverty traps entire generations and shackles them to place; how devastating drug usage creeps in to fill voids that should be filled by the things a broken government fails to provide: dignity, education, healthcare, opportunity. It's about how oppressed populations in rural America obstinately continue to support politicians and policies who actively harm them, and how the liberal factions that are trying to do some good for those same populations fail to meet them where they're at, fail to understand them because rural Western white people have, for generations, lived on an entirely different planet from those of us who've had the benefit of some influence from the "coastal elites." Through the very human agonies and struggles of two central characters--Wendell, a young man doing his best in a very bad situation, and Gillian, a teacher and social worker still aching over the murder of her BLM-ranger husband more than a decade before--the impossible clash of conservative and liberal ideologies plays out with great sensitivity and understanding. Through the device of an old journal, the voice of Wendell's dead father, Verl, also threads through the narrative, providing insight into Wendell's current situation and the powder keg the Bull Mountain region has become in the years since Gillian's husband was killed.
  
  The character work is nothing short of exquisite. Every single character in this book, no matter how minor, is shown with great dimension and tenderness, with touching and admirable compassion. Wilkins truly understands the root of this conflict. He truly understands the perspectives of people on both sides; he knows that there are no easy answers, that both sides are wounded and in great pain, and that healing will only come at the cost of yet more pain for everyone. No character, not even Verl, is a stock "bad guy", being a dick just for the sake of it. Everyone who does wrong does wrong because wrongs were done to him. The generations-long path of suffering is apparent, and there is clear compassion and rationality on every page. This is one of the finest examples of character work I've ever read. Wilkins' understanding of human nature and human need is so great that I could wish for him to be appointed to some kind of humanitarian, policy-making office in a new administration, though I suspect that would be a great curse on the guy.
  
  The prose is pitch-perfect. I do love lush, "big" prose when it's done well (no surprise to anybody who enjoys my own books, which are, uh, DENSE WITH WORDS to say the least. No surprise to anybody who hates my books, either.) But I also have a great appreciation for a sparer style, which Wilkins delivers. It's mostly the voices of his characters, so beautifully established and faithfully adhered to, which make his tight, spartan prose read as impossibly poetic. Once you understand Wendell, Gillian, and Verl as people, it makes the scenery and emotions described through each character's distinct perspective that much more powerful and vivid.
  
  A couple of my favorite passages. In Wendell's voice:
  
  *
  Wendell rocked and rocked, and Rowdy fell into a deep, thrashing sleep, his small body jerking through dreams. Wendell found himself reciting in his head the two lines from Macbeth that he remembered best. How goes the night, boy? Banquo inquires of his son Fleance, who is at the watch. And Fleance responds, The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
  How goes the night, boy? The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
  How goes the night, boy? The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
  How goes the night, boy? The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
  The way those two lines clicked and clacked, the way the father asks not after the son but after the night, and the son offers exactly that, the night--it all crushed down on his heart so wonderfully. Nearly a decade and a half had passed since Mr. Whearty had staged the play with them, and in that time Wendell had often chanted those lines to himself as he fixed the fence or drove the combine or rode for strays. It was Freddie Benson who'd played Feance, and in both shows he'd mumbled and tripped over those words--the moon is down; I have not heard the clock--and Wendell had been angry. Still was, in a way. After the show, on the drive home, he had complained to his mother about Freddie. He had tried to explain how much those lines mattered to him, and though she listened, she just smoothed her hand over his head, told him not to worry, that he'd been such a good, scary ghost.
  *
  
  In Verl's voice:
  
  *
  21?
  Not even that much below freezing. And still so cold. Goddamn. How I would like a fire. I cannot have a fire. They are after me. Here is what I do. I dig down as deep as I can which is not too deep for soon there are roots and rocks but no matter I burrow in there like an old bear and heap sand and leaves and needles over me. It helps. Some. The rocks are hard beneath me and give me back some portion of my heat. I only wish against the wind. The trees in this dry country are scrawny as mutt dogs and the night wind scrapes along the top of me like a dull knife down to my bones.
  I am sorry to go on like this. I should not complain. It is my own goddamn doing. I should have brung more clothes. More food. Should not have shot that deer. Should not have done many things.
  I took this wolf tooth like it mattered.
  Later
  I think now we would get along. The wolf and me. It would be nice to hear her howl at a fat moon when I too am holed up beneath the moon.
  My belly howling
  Later
  Her tooth at my throat. The length of her claws.
  *
  
  I just can't get over what a beauty and a wonder this book is. How sensitively it's written, with such care and love and knowing. It was the first book I finished in 2020 and so far I haven't found one to top it, though I've enjoyed quite a few tremendously. I have a feeling that Fall Back Down When I Die will remain one of my favorite novels for the rest of my life, and Joe Wilkins one of my favorite writers. It will certainly have a permanent place on my bookshelf.
• 
  Aurelio

  Joe Wilkins ha escrito un fascinante libro de la Norteamérica vacía con una lírica entramada en la naturaleza, montañas, cielos y estrellas siempre presentes. Personajes redondos con capacidad transformadora de una realidad decadente en su forma de entenderse con el medio natural donde habita. Se tratan varias situaciones de tremenda actualidad, ecología, economía rural, educación, alcoholismo y drogas, diversos modelos familiares, política y grupos de ultraderecha.
  Y todo ello aderezado como una historia familiar y una violencia a veces emparentada al western o la película "El cazador" de Michael Cimino. He disfrutado de la lectura.
• 
  Jessica Sullivan

  “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.
  
• 
  Mrtruscott

  This book caught my eye, as it was compared to “4th of July Creek.” Not quite as complicated as that book (which I loved despite its wanton violence and wildly messy plot). This one, also set in Montana, inched and then rushed through a building sense of dread from its opening pages.
  
  Restless cows in a corral, pit bulls loose in a yard, boxes of shotgun shells from Walmart, a deer on a dark road, conspiracy theorists and their fans, the weather, the cold, spotty cell phone coverage...so much that can go wrong in Montana, big sky country.
  
  It’s a merciless, brutal way of life in Montana. Joe Wilkins is a poet, and his writing shows a care with words. His way of describing the outdoors reminds me of the best of Peter Heller (and I am the type who prefers to think about The Outdoors rather than be outside in the actual outdoors).
  It’s very unlikely that I would ever hike in or around the Bull Mountains, but this book made me feel like I have been there.
  
  People in Montana aren’t making a living, they’re making a dying, as one character says at the end of the book. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Oh, I forgot to mention the rattlesnakes.
• 
  Pedro Pablo

  Por libros como éste adoro a mi librero, yo no habría sido capaz de llegar a él por mí mismo. Un trágico puzzle donde todas las piezas terminan encajando, aunque al principio no veas ninguna relación. Aunque no leas nunca esto, ¡gracias José Carlos!
• 
  Marisolera

  Bonito y duro. Basura blanca intentando sobrevivir en un entorno difícil.
• 
  Lori L (She Treads Softly)

  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/2019/0...
• 
  Chris LaTray

  There isn't a wrong note in Wilkins's new novel. He manages to pull off the development of characters simultaneous with a growing sense of unease, that something really bad is going to happen. We just don't know what, or to whom. Wilkins handles the landscapes and the clash of cultures around who that land and everything on it really belongs to, pitting neighbor against neighbor, outsider against local. It feels like everything I've loved about Wilkins's work -- poetry, essays, short fiction -- all came together in service to this brilliant piece of writing.
• 
  Heather

  God damn, I loved this book. I stayed up an hour later than I meant to because it was too intense to stop where I was (I even had a stomach ache), and then I woke up early to finish it before work.
  
  I loved the writing style, the setting, and the plot, but mostly I loved how well the author understood the characters. Everyone was fleshed out and examined with both a sympathetic and a critical eye-- the Tea Party/anti-BLM ranchers, the teacher social worker, the alcoholic and near-alcoholic, the good high school student, the almost-fuck-up guy trying to do better, etc.
  
  Woof. So good.
• 
  Andy Weston

  Though Wilkins’s novel broaches topical issues of the environment, and social disharmony, it carries with it the same problems that many contemporary American novels have had in the last few years for me; difficult to identify with characters, a reliance on improbable coincidences, but most of all a story that has potential losing momentum with frequent passages of irrelevant waffle. In striving to be politically correct it loses quite a bit also; which seems or be a feature of the country’s contemporary fiction.
  The rugged beauty of rural Eastern Montana shines through though, and it is evident that Wilkins’s background is as a poet. This is his first novel, and he has some way to go before reaching the heights of those he quotes as his influences, chiefly Jim Harrison.
• 
  Roviragrao

  Creo que uno de los logros de esta novela es la capacidad para crear un equilibrio entre la belleza y la crueldad, la inocencia y el dolor. Te llega pero sin dejarte hecho polvo. Sospechas que no acabará bien y a la vez quieres mantener la esperanza.
  
  Me ha hecho reflexionar sobre la marca que supone sobre una persona su origen: el lugar donde nace, las personas que la criaron y las que no lo hicieron. ¿Se puede superar y que no defina por completo quién eres y quién puedes llegar a ser?
  
  He terminado la lectura pensando en cuatro estrellas pero me ha dejado tan buen poso que se va a llevar las cinco.
• 
  Lolly K Dandeneau

  via my blog:
  https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
  '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
  
  
  
• 
  Beatriz Vega

  Valoración: 4,5/5
  
  
  “El hueco de las estrellas” es una novela que nos sumerge en la América profunda actual. En una realidad brutal y cruel.
  Una historia sobrecogedora y desgarradora de amor y violencia pero narrada con una prosa, a veces poética, conjugando a la perfección el entorno y los sentimientos de los personajes.
  Una historia narrada a tres voces sobre la vida y la tierra llena de dolor, odio, rencor y una desesperanza que lleva al ser humano al límite y a la sinrazón y por ende a cometer actos brutales.
  Personas que como escribió Raymond Chandler «se sentían tan huecos y vacíos como el espacio entre las estrellas».
  
  Una novela que rompe poco a poco al lector a través de los huecos de las palabras.
  Una lectura maravillosa para saborear poco a poco y así poder sentir el viento que atraviesa las copas de los cedros, el olor de la hierba de los pastos y disfrutar de ese cielo inmenso.
• 
  Marilyn

  This darkly compelling book has the feel of a western, or maybe a western thriller with psychological undertones. Some achingly beautiful descriptions of Montana and the people who live there. The story of lost Wendell and the mute youngster he must care for is touching, sad and will haunt you for days.
• 
  Jenny

  Another entry for best book I’ve read this year. Haunting exploration of the ways the land carves fates into men, women, and children. And the ways we hunt each other. The prose was stunning in places. Bits of Cormac McCarthy and Marilynn’s Robinson in there together.
• 
  L'atelier de Litote

  La vie de Wendell n’est pas simple, à vingt-quatre ans, il travail dans un ranch et tente de rembourser des arriérés d’impôt sur ses terres. Il a récemment perdu sa mère d’un cancer qui a laissé d’énormes factures à rembourser pour des opérations qui n’ont rien changées. Son père a disparu dans des conditions énigmatiques et violentes, une dizaine d’années plus tôt. C’est à ce moment là qu’on lui confie le fils de sa cousine incarcérée et toxicomane. Rowdy a sept ans, il est muet et a certainement subit des traumatismes. Wendell va mettre un point d’honneur à prendre en charge son neveu, son attachement pour lui fait partie des jolis moments de ce roman. Je ne savais pas à quoi m’attendre en lisant cet auteur mais rapidement on est fixé sur le côté inéluctable des choses. Wendel aura beau faire de son mieux, on sent une sorte de fatalité peser sur cette famille, une destinée de violence à laquelle personne ne peut échapper. Gillian est veuve, enseignante elle s’est installée dans la région de son mari, avec sa fille Maddy. La construction du récit est parfaitement maîtrisée comme un engrenage que rien ne peut arrêter. Et puis il y a des chapitres courts et intenses où le père de Wendell s’adresse à lui sous une forme quasi poétique. On en apprend ainsi plus sur lui et le drame qu’il a vécu. Alors même si le livre débute calmement, c’est pour mieux préparer la tempête qui s’abattra dans le dernier tiers du livre. L’auteur joue avec nos émotions, ses personnages sont attachants on entre en connexion avec eux. Un premier roman inoubliable ou le passé réclame son du impitoyablement. Comment un livre qui débute comme une formidable histoire d’amour familial, d’amour de la terre, de la nature peut prendre un tournant extrême et nous emporter là où on ne s’y attendait pas. C’est tout l’art et le talent de l’auteur qui s’expriment ici et nous laisse pantois. Bonne lecture.
• 
  Jan

  From the Center for Fiction Best First Novel short list, a quiet, beautifully written story of poverty and anti-government passion in the American West. The sense of place and culture were well portrayed, but it’s the relationship between Wendell and his nephew Rowdy that left me gutted. If you like Willy Vlautin or Smith Henderson (Fourth of July Creek), you’ll definitely want to check this out.
• 
  Wally Wood

  We are in eastern Montana: "As the neighbor girl's SUV disappeared down the road, Wendell watched the tire-kicked dust bloom and sift through shades of gold, ochre, and high in the evening sky a pearling blue. Harvest light, late-August light—thin, slanted, granular. At his back the mountains already bruised and dark."
  
  A social worker has dropped seven-year-old Rowdy Burns on twenty-one-year-old Wendell, the boy's only relative. Wendell is living in a trailer on what's left of the family's ranch land (the house remains, but it's unlivable), an orphan after his mother died a year earlier. Rowdy is "developmentally delayed," "variously involved," and, "hadn't said so much as a word since they'd found him" locked alone in an apartment on the south side of Billings for more than a week. His mother is Wendell's cousin on her way into prison for a drug bust.
  
  Joe Wilkin's first novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, is told from three points of view: Wendell's; Gillian's, a forty-nine assistant school principal, single mother, whose ranger husband had been murdered ten years earlier; and Verl's, who writes a writing a fragmentary diary/letter to his son as he evades federal marshals while he hides out in the Bull Mountains.
  
  This is Cliven Bundy country rather than John Wayne's, where this land is my land; it's not your land; and it's sure as heck not the government's land, which can go stuff itself. A land where a pickup truck will proudly wear a "Global Warming: Another Liberal Tax Scam" bumper sticker. This is Bureau of Land Management land "that had once belonged to the Crow, to the grizzly bears and buffalo. A land homesteaded less than a hundred years ago and abandoned not long after, a wilderness now of collapsed coal mines and yawing shacks, ghost towns not even old-timers could recall the names of, where the dry arteries of forsaken train lines bled into cactus and grass. A land leased and grazed and logged every so often but in large part empty, home to elk and antelope and mule deer, bobcat and cougar and coyote, and, for the past dozen years, a seldom-seen pack of wolves."
  
  This is a novel rich in description, character, and incident. We learn how to prepare traps and set them. We see Gillian doing her best to bring education (civilization?) to her public school, one with so few students that to lose one is to threaten its existence. Both Wendell, as his guardian, and Gillian, as his teacher, want the best for Rowdy. But what is the best? What is the best for the land? To cut all the BLM fence wire and let cattle roam where they will? To exterminate the wolves before they can kill any lambs?
  
  Wilkins was born and raised north of the Bull Mountains, out on the Big Dry of eastern Montana. His The Mountain and the Fathers, "captures the lives of boys and men in that desolate country, a place that shapes the people who live there and rarely lets them go." He is also the author of three poetry collections, most recently When We Were Birds, winner of the 2017 Oregon Book Award in Poetry. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, Orion, TriQuarterly, Ecotone, The Sun, and High Country News.
  
  According to his website, Wilkins spent two years teaching ninth grade pre-algebra in the Mississippi Delta with Teach for America after graduating from Gonzaga University with a degree in computer engineering, an experience on which he draws in Fall Back Down When I Die. He then went on to earn his MFA in creative writing from the University of Idaho. He now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of western Oregon, where he directs the creative program at Linfield College.
  
  With his background as a teacher, memoirist, and poet, Wilkins has written an exceptional first novel. It deserves to be read by anyone who is interested in the modern West, outstanding writing, and other lives.
• 
  Andrea Cirilli

  Questo è un libro di intersezioni, di incroci pericolosamente intensi.
  Tra quella parte della società più liberal, urbana e istruita, e in qualche modo protetta dai grandi cambiamenti dei nostri tempi, e quella più rurale e di provincia, attaccata alla propria terra e alle proprie libertà e diffidente nei confronti di uno Stato percepito come intrusivo.
  Tra la generazione dei padri, e quella dei figli che nel bene e nel male ne sono il prodotto ma anche una versione nuova, originale, che magari aspira ad altro. Lacy e suo figlio Rowdy, Gillian e sua figlia Maddy, Verl e suo figlio Wendell.
  Tra la rassegnazione un po’ amara e un po’ pragmatica di chi sa che nulla ci è dovuto e chi invece spera, forse vuole altro, qualcosa di diverso. Tra la terra, le radici, e la lettura, il viaggio mentale, i passi in avanti.
  Ma è anche l’incontro bellissimo e struggente tra Wendell e il piccolo, introverso Rowdy che non parla quasi mai ma che tanto ha da dire, dando un nuovo senso e una nuova prospettiva alla vita faticosa e disillusa dell’orfano ventiquattrenne.
  Un libro che narra dello sperduto – per noi che non lo conosciamo – Montana e di quella frontiera occidentale che è simbolo di tante frontiere, e incroci, nella società come nelle vite di ognuno.
  Come l’ha definito efficacemente Nickolas Butler, un “western del Ventunesimo secolo, uno dei migliori romanzi degli ultimi anni”.