A Sky For Us Alone

A Sky For Us Alone

YA/adult fiction
"Heat makes people do crazy things--hate does too. The summer I
turned eighteen was the hottest we'd ever known in Strickland County,
least in the years I'd been alive. Those scorched months felt like
God threw us all in a greased-up skillet and cranked the gas on high
just to see what might happen. And everything that had been simmering
low finally exploded into plain sight."
Harlowe, narrator of Kristin Russell's A Sky For Us Alone, could
have added another element to his listing of the things driving people
crazy the summer he turns eighteen--drugs. The setting of this fine
novel is the poor rural South where opiates burn through people's
minds, families, and communities like wildfire. This is a region
where people voted for Trump because they felt like the rest of the
world didn't give a damn. Recall he was going to recreate a future
for coal mining?
For a boy just turning voting age, Harlowe has a lot of burdens
to bear. First of all there's his brother. Nate had slipped away
from Harlowe's birthday party. As their mother fixes supper she and
Nate hear a thud on the back porch.
"In front of me, Nate's body lay bloody, crumpled in a heap on
his side. I fell to the planks beside him, and my eyes swept up to
the truck in out driveway where Amos Prater's son, Tommy, looked at me
straight from the window. 'Hey!' I yelled, and started down the porch
stairs toward his truck, but he pulled out and drove away, dust
clouding his wheels and our driveway."
The police are reluctant to believe that Tommy had anything to
do with the death. Maybe there was a hunting accident. Maybe Tommy,
driving by, saw Nate's body and decided to do a good deed. Nothing to
do with the fact that Tommy's father runs everything in their neck of
the woods.
Then there's his mother. Years before she'd become addicted to
opiates following an operation. She'd had quite an ordeal breaking
their hold on her. Nate had taken Harlowe to stay with a neighbor so
he wouldn't witness the ugliness of her struggle. But her older son's
violent death seems to have her back on the pills.
"I walked closer to her and put my arms around her shoulders,
partly sorry, but mostly beyond angry at how she was acting. Like she
didn't have any choice in the matter. I know she felt me tense when I
thought about all the things I could do to try to forget what happened
to Nate. But there wouldn't be anyone left with any sense if I did..."
Then there's beautiful Tennessee, the girl Harlowe falls hard
for, who moves into town with her father and little brother, Omie, to
whom she's mother as well as sister. (Their mom is dead.) Harlowe has
seen the violence her father is capable of. And one night he finds
him unconscious, overdosed on drugs and alcohol. From Tennessee and
Omie's reactions, he concludes this isn't the first time.
Finally there's Harlowe's own future. He very much doesn't want
to go work in the coal mines after he gets out of high school. But he
can't think of any other options.
A Sky For Us Alone is a spellbinding novel centered around an
unfortunately too relevant topic.
On a personal note, Maine Day was a special anniversary for me--eleven
months with dining services. Last year Maine Day I'd been hired but I
hadn't yet started working. My friend Russell and I had worked a
service project at Wilson Center. When I saw the dining services
people at work feeding people so professionally and efficiently I was
bursting with excitement. "Russell," I exclaimed, "Soon I'll be one
of them!" Now I am and it's even better than I'd anticipated.
Last April I'd been admitted to the grad school program of my dreams
and was frantic to find a job that would allow me to earn tuition.
Thanks to child raising, I had a work history gap you could drive a
hummer through. Anna McDormand was willing to take a chance on me.
That made all the difference.
A great big shout out goes out to Anna McDormand, champion of rescue
plants, animals, and people.
jules hathaway




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