From Barnes & Noble
After several acclaimed short story collections, Ron Carlson makes a welcome return to long fiction with this gorgeous, understated novel about a transformative friendship among three troubled men. Refugees from the painful past, a ranch foreman and two hired hands are drawn together one summer by a bizarre construction project in the Idaho Rockies -- a motorcycle stunt ramp for a spectacularly ill conceived feat of daredevilry. All three are hopelessly mired in their private sorrows; but as the months progress, they find solace in each other's company and self-worth in the standards of excellence they impose on a foolhardy "road to nowhere." Set against the vast, rugged landscape of the American West, this finely crafted story explores the healing power of hope and our overpowering need for human connection in a lonely world.
From the Publisher
Award-winning short story writer Ron Carlson delivers a stirring novel about three men confronting their pasts and their purpose
Beloved story writer Ron Carlson's first novel in thirty years, Five Skies is the story of three men gathered high in the Rocky Mountains for a construction project that is to last the summer. Having participated in a spectacular betrayal in Los Angeles, the giant, silent Arthur Key drifts into work as a carpenter in southern Idaho. Here he is hired, along with the shiftless and charming Ronnie Panelli, to build a stunt ramp beside a cavernous void. The two will be led by Darwin Gallegos, the foreman of the local ranch who is filled with a primeval rage at God, at man, at life. As they endeavor upon this simple, grand project, the three reveal themselves in cautiously resonant, profound ways. And in a voice of striking intimacy and grace, Carlson's novel reveals itself as a story of biblical, almost spiritual force. A bellwether return from one of our greatest craftsmen, Five Skies is sure to be one of the most praised and cherished novels of the year.
The Washington Post -
Michael Dirda
Ron Carlson's Five Skies is a novel about three damaged men who work together for a summer in Idaho building a ramp. This doesn't sound like much of a plot, I know. But if one invests any work -- building a ramp or writing a novel -- with sufficient attention, care and reverence, the result can be a kind of prayer. Certainly, the three racked souls of Five Skies are all in need of spiritual and emotional succor. Arthur Key is a middle-aged, self-taught engineer, guilt-ridden by a terrible mistake; Darwin Gallegos is a 60ish ranch foreman, broken-hearted and wounded by an irremediable loss; and Ronnie Panelli is a skinny 20-year-old kid, a thief and a runaway, who yearns for respect and love. The novel relates in part how these three grow into a kind of family, as they move toward tragedy and redemption.
The New York Times -
Tom Barbash
…beautiful and unnerving… Five Skies is like one of those heartbreaking Raymond Carver stories in which a luckless character catches a glimpse of something better, a small moment of rightness about the world, and, instead of cheering us, this glimmer of hope makes us even more anxious—because we know it can't possibly last.
Mark Spragg
In Five Skies Ron Carlson has fashioned such a moving and elemental meditation on every man's struggle toward family, toward the embrace of his individual soul, that, by its end, I found my appreciation for both grief and redemption to be profoundly altered. Here is a fine and gracefully rendered novel. (Mark Spragg, author of An Unfinished Life)
Washington Post
Carlson's style—low-key, deliberate, reminiscent of both early Hemingway and contemporary James Salter. . . . [Carlson] can turn even a shopping list into a poem.
Antonya Nelson
Ron Carlson knows there's a hole in the middle of our lives, a chasm we can hardly imagine looking into. So when he sends three men out west to see what they can do about it, the reader must pay close attention. Five Skies is not only a deeply moving contemporary western masterpiece--it is also a philosophical query about what it means to be a grown man, a grown person. You must read this book because it's going to make a beautiful blockbuster film, and you're going to want to be able to claim that you read it first. (Antonya Nelson, author of Female Trouble)
Atlantic
A masterpiece . . . Carlson's novel is the distillation of reality that readers crave.
Rick Bass
A beautiful novel, as unique and insular as the quiet and powerful landscape it inhabits, and as braided with hope and despair, and hope again, as are the lives of the three men at its center.
Publishers Weekly
Two stoics and a teenage misanthrope are brought together in Idaho's Rocky Mountains to build a ramp to nowhere in Carlson's first novel in 25 years, a tour de force of grief, atonement and the cost of loyalty. Darwin Gallegos, spiritually bereft after the sudden death of his wife, is hired for one last job at Rio Difficulto, the sprawling ranch where he had lived and worked for years. The job: construct a motorcycle ramp that will launch a daredevil across a gorge (the event is to be taped and bring in a pile of money). Darwin hires for the job drifters Arthur Key, a large and quiet man hiding from his recent past, and Ronnie Panelli, a wiry teenager on the lam from minor criminal mischief. As the men work from late spring through summer, their wounds come slowly to light: the seething fury that took root in Darwin after his wife died; Arthur's career as the go-to Hollywood stunt engineer that he abandoned after betraying his guileless brother; and Ronnie's short lifetime of failure, atoned for as he learns the carpentry trade. Carlson writes with uncommon precision, and this return to long-form fiction after four well-received story collections is stunning. (May)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
John Hiett
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Library Journal
Big Arthur Key, ace Hollywood stunt scene builder, drifts into Idaho, the better to hide from his past. He serves as mentor to 19-year-old Ronnie Panelli, who's making transitions from boy to man, from thief to carpenter. Together, they're hired by Darwin Gallegos, who is filled with rage at his wife's recent death in a fluke accident. Their project is to build a ramp for a daredevil motorcycle jump across a canyon. None of the men is particularly verbose, especially about his feelings, so Carlson's achievement here is to portray those feelings, and the men's growing friendship, in terms of jobs well done, tools competently handled, meals shared, lessons learned, and gorgeous landscapes. Carlson seems deliberately to avoid the more spectacular elements latent in his work, as he also does in his understated reading of his first novel in 25 years. This audiobook sneaks up on the listener, reminding us how rare is the book that describes men without recourse to violence, sex, or intoxication. A quiet gem; recommended for all libraries.
Library Journal
Three troubled men unfold their sorrows as they work one summer at a construction project in the Rockies. The celebrated short story writer's first full-length fiction in three decades; with a four-city tour. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An emotionally bleak novel by noted short-story writer Carlson (A Kind of Flying, 2003, etc.) develops a strong, touching bond among three male workers on an isolated building crew in the Idaho mountains. Three men of very different backgrounds end up working closely over a period of two months on a stunt-ramp construction project out in the wilds of the West: Darwin Gallegos, a widower and 40-year foreman at the Rio Difficulto ranch, is the project manager, who decides perhaps too impetuously to hire two laborers loitering in Pocatello, Idaho, and bring them west to the canyon river site outside the ranch. Arthur Key is hugely built, has considerable experience constructing movie sets in L.A. and is fleeing trouble back in California; his brother, Gary, a film stuntman, has been recently killed in an accident, leaving Key full of guilt for the affair he was conducting with Gary's wife and eager to take on any work that allows him to forget the tragedy. Ronnie Panelli is a hapless 19-year-old fresh out of juvenile jail for stealing cars, a former golf caddy who knows little about construction or roughing it and is constantly getting hurt. Gradually, the men warm to the rigors of the work and each finds his specialty-Darwin is the chef, Ronnie the carpenter and Arthur the canny figurer of plans. Ronnie's troubles include being punctured in the shoulder with a long splinter while they are setting telephone poles and embroiling himself romantically with a local girl. The townies from Mercy get wind of the crew's work and attempt to disrupt it. The increasing trust among the men engenders a heartfelt and healing friendship, especially for Arthur, whose filial protectiveness for Ronniereflects the way he once cared for his younger brother. Flashbacks fill in Arthur's affair with Gary's wife. The ending, however, is harsh and grim. A thinking man's novel, containing all the rugged elements of Western allure.
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