The Desert Sky Before Us: A Novel
By Anne Valente
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
"The Desert Sky Before Us is a marvel. A vital, profound story of the aftermath of loss, and of the terrors and illuminations of love." —R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
From award-winning author Anne Valente comes this poignant and unforgettable literary novel of two estranged sisters—one, a former racecar driver and the other a recently-released prisoner—who embark on a road trip together to complete the scavenger hunt their mother designed for them before her death.
When Billie is released from a correctional facility in Decatur, her sister Rhiannon is there to meet her, even though the two haven’t seen each other in months. Painful secrets and numerous unspoken betrayals linger between them—but most agonizing is the sudden passing of their mother, a renowned paleontologist.
Rhiannon and Billie must overcome their differences as they set off on a road trip west, following the breadcrumb-trail of their late mother’s scavenger hunt, a sort of second funeral she planned in her final days. The sisters know the trail will end in Utah at the famous Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry, where their mother spent her career researching dinosaur fossils. But the seemingly endless days on the road soon take their toll, forcing Rhiannon and Billie to confront their hostilities and revisit old memories—both good and bad.
As they travel across the heart of America, and as a series of plane crashes in the news make their journey all the more urgent, the two sisters begin to rediscover each other and to uncover their late mother’s veiled second life, taking them on an unexpected emotional journey inward—and forcing them to come to terms with their own choices in life.
Anne Valente
Anne Valente’s first short-story collection, By Light We Knew Our Names, won the Dzanc Books Short Story Prize. Her fiction appears in One Story, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and the Chicago Tribune, and her essays appear in The Believer and the Washington Post. Originally from St. Louis, she teaches creative writing and literature at Hamilton College.
Read more from Anne Valente
Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Desert Sky Before Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Desert Sky Before Us
Related ebooks
The Amber Shadows: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Her Mad Song: Project Tempest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKeystone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unquiet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Madigan Mine Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Last Kid Left: A Novel Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Skunk Train Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Stars of Mount Quixx: The Brindlewatch Quintet, Book One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMany Are Invited Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Open Fire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInto The Peaks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Famished Heart: The Sunday Times Crime Club Star Pick Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Little Altar Boy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woods Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Smothered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Now Let's Talk of Graves Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFuneral Home Evenings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sunset and Jericho: A Wakeland Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Other Year Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Dark Love Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Study Guide for Gina Berriault's "Women in Their Beds" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTruth Truth Lie: Twisted Texas Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInfinite Blue Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lolly Willowes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House On Breakaheart Road: Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Two Menus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath in a Tenured Position Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHarmony In Flesh and Black: A Fred Taylor Art Mystery Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Nameless Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Legacy of Bones Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Literary Fiction For You
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tattooist of Auschwitz: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna Karenina: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Desert Sky Before Us
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We drive a lot in this family. 16 hours or so each way every summer. We don't head west; we head north. But the destination is almost unimportant. The monotony, the quiet time inside your own head, the conversation with fellow passengers not face to face but side by side as the miles unspool under the tires their own importance. There is something sacred, something hypnotic in long drives. How much more would it be if there were wounds to heal, futures to try to find, and a past to reconcile like there is in Anne Valente's hypnotic new novel, The Desert Sky Before Us?Rhiannon and Billie are sisters whose paleontologist mother has recently died. Only Rhiannon could attend her funeral because Billie was in prison, finishing a 6 year sentence for setting the library she worked in on fire. Knowing she was dying, their mother arranged for a second funeral so that Billie could attend, one far from their Illinois home, at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Utah where Margaret Hurst spent the bulk of her professional career. All over the world, planes have been falling out of the sky, likely because of climate change, and knowing this, she devised a long driving road trip for her daughters, giving them the gift of time together to overcome their estrangement, to learn more about who she was, and to look into themselves to discover who they once were, who they are now, and who they want to be. Rhiannon was once a promising race car driver but now sells textbooks. Her long term relationship with her girlfriend has fallen apart and she is completely emotionally shut off, as she has been for so long. Billie is free of prison but not of the past, the abuse she suffered at the hands of her boyfriend, the loss of the red tailed hawk she once trained, and she is bottled up with rage and hurt. Spending time in a car with her older sister, traveling to each point of their mother's planned journey will test them both.Both Rhiannon and Billie are lost characters. Each of them used to have a passion and a purpose but they've both lost them and it remains to be seen if their late mother can help them recover either. They are damaged in their own ways, poor communicators, and so used to stifling their emotions that cracking open and laying themselves bare will be the hardest part of their journey, far harder than the multiple days they'll spend crisscrossing the West toward the final memorial site for their mother. There are no big plot climaxes here but there is a humming background tension threading through an emotional exploration. There is a starkness to the land and landscape the women are driving through, but beauty and infinity too, mirroring their hearts as they uncover themselves within the context of their relationship to each other and to their family, reduced as it may now be, as a whole. The fossils of their mother's career, the artifacts from her life that she left them to find, can only tell them so much, still holding secrets and uncertainties, perhaps to be uncovered one day, perhaps not. This is beautifully written, a warning, haunting and aching. Readers who prize tender character development and who wonder at the slow, painful, messy revelation of real relationship and understanding will find much to appreciate here.