Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #364238 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Culver, a mild-mannered and likable young teen growing up in a small Northwestern town, is trying to sort out a great deal of confusing stuff: his father's drowning death; the bigotry evident against local Indians; his mother's dislike for his charismatic Uncle Jake; the way his outlaw stepfather, wanted for torching a railroad compound, keeps popping in and out of his life. Culver's interests run to the physical-basketball, fly-fishing and working at his uncle's bait-and-tackle shop. It's there that he receives an informal education at the feet of a group of men-dubbed the "backroom boys" by narrator Culver-who hang around the store and who include a cropduster, a glue-mixer at the local lumber mill, a baker, a local radio personality and an enigmatic Indian sheriff. Culver is seduced by the group's easy joviality and his Uncle Jake's heroic streak, which manifests when a fire claims the mill. But the boy discovers a secret involving his dead father that drives a wedge between himself and his uncle, and that threatens to make an adult out of him before his time. Lesley (Winterkill) is a smooth and talented writer, with a pleasing touch for detail and an unwavering confidence. His material tends to the sentimental: his central metaphor, a skyful of invented constellations as related to Culver by Uncle Jake, is an easy image, neither compelling nor powerful. But Culver is an unusually appealing character, and when the novel's close toes a maudlin line, it feels almost earned.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Lesley's first two novels--Winterkill (1984) and River Song (1989)--examined the struggle of Native Americans to preserve the wisdom of their ancestors in the face of opposition from the bureaucratic white world. This time the tenuous coexistence between whites and Indians in the contemporary Northwest is again an element in the story, but the focus is on the coming-of-age of a young white teenager, Culver, growing up with his mother and his uncle Jake, a river guide and the owner of a sporting goods store. Lurking beneath the perfectly captured camaraderie of Jake and the good ol' boys hanging out at the store is the unresolved question of how Culver's father died in a river accident. Answering this question forces Culver to confront his family's flawed history and eventually leads him to his own epiphany on the river. Lesley has a real feel for the way the intimacy and the pettiness of small-town life push and pull both young and old. Though the novel contains a few too many flights of fly-fishing-inspired lyricism, it further establishes the author as a major voice in the fiction of the American West. Bill Ott

Review
"City boy though I am, I fell into Craig's Lesley's wonderfully told story as though it were my own. . . . It reminded me once again of just how welcome you can feel in the midst of a novel." --Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio

"An accomplished book. Lesley's biblical, metaphoric invocations of fire and water are powerfully drawn . . . Unsentimental, vigorous and compassionate." --Valerie Miner, The Boston Sunday Globe

"An exquisite novel that holds the voices of the river and its people in perfect balance. It is a story that stays with you and grows between silences. Mr. Lesley is an empathetic force in fiction." --Terry Tempest Williams

"A complex and vivid and surprisingly funny book, a book I greatly admire." --Robert Olen Butler

"An exquisitely delineated map of America. All of our history is encompassed in its pages. The author retells the ancient struggle between whites and Native Americans for cherished territory. And as in any great American novel, a young man comes to terms with his own flawed heritage." --Carolyn See

"Craig Lesley leaves crimes unresolved in The Sky Fisherman and concentrates on something larger--the joy and tragedy of human endeavor. His well-defined characters pull us quickly into small-town life . . . and through them we discover another character, a wild river that runs through this wonderful novel like a great shudder." --Barry Lopez

Customer Reviews

The Sky Fisherman
This book has a little something for everyone: outdoors, fishing, hunting, murders, mysteries, fires, heroic rescues, old stories and legends. I found this book captivating the setting and story line ...me into the town of Gateway. There is cursing in this book, but the characters and the tension would not be easily understood without it. The moral of Culver's mother is questionable though, because she dated while still under matramony to another man. However, from cover to cover this book is great, and I send a positive recommendation.

Demented And Mysterious
I do not recommend this book for those who have a weak stomach or those who like romantic stories. This book envolves alot of death and insane people. Sky Fisherman also has cursing. The swearing gets worse as the book goes on but it is necessary for you to understand the people and how they feel. The best part of this book is when the bums perform the "do it yourself cremation!" This book makes you think. You have to assume alot of things for the book to have a real ending.

Lesley can really convey the art of male bonding.
I've read all of Lesley's books and can recommend them all. His real talent centers on an acute ability to elegantly and truthfully convey the dynamics of the son-father relationship in all it's manifestations (it's nephew-uncle in the case of The Sky Fisherman, but that's not really important), the intricacies of small town life and the tensions between Native American culture and greater American society.

These are "guy" books. The few women who inhabit the pages are little more than caricature--the action is the interactions between men, between men and boys and between men, boys and nature.

The real pleasure in Lesley's books is that while the story has nothing to do with how you related to your father in terms of the nature of the story, place and/or characters, by the end of the story you realize it has everything to do with you and your father. Lesley has captured the essence of the relationship--that's the substance. The rest is just well written window dressing, but very engaging and engrossing window dressing.

I'd suggest any woman beating her head against the wall trying to find a great gift for a father or husband give one of Lesley's books. You can't go wrong whichever one you choose.