Fencing The Sky

A haunting novel of the American West about an accidental murder that springs from the best intentions. Stepping his horse through the lush, beaver-worked draw looking for stray cows, Mike Arans never imagined that, moments later, he'd find himself swinging a nylon loop around Merriweather Snipes and pulling until his neck snapped. Once Snipes was dead, Mike fished a notepad and a stub of pencil from his pocket, wrote "I did this," signed his name, and stuffed the note into Snipes's breast pocket. Then Mike rode to his house, stocked up on supplies, and rode due west. Fencing the Sky is the story of how circumstances spiral out of control, the story of gross indifference and avarice in the face of breathtaking beauty. Ultimately, James Galvin's novel is a book about violence and how it destroys lives when the land is at stake. This long-awaited lyrical first novel is nothing less than the story of the disappearance of the American West.

From critically acclaimed author of The Meadow comes a haunting novel of the American West. Circumstances spiral out of control when an accidental murder springs from the best intentions. With one man dead and another on the run, this is a story about violence and how it destroys lives when the land is at stake. This lyrical first novel--long-awaited by the many admirers of James Galvin's "The Meadow"--is nothing less than the story of the disappearance of the American West.

An American Library Association Notable Book In discrete disclosures joined with the intricacy of a spider's web, James Galvin depicts the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the few people who do not possess but are themselves possessed by this terrain. In so doing he reveals an experience that is part of our heritage and mythology. For Lyle, Ray, Clara, and App, the struggle to survive on an independent family ranch is a series of blameless failures and unacclaimed successes that illuminate the Western character. The Meadow evokes a sense of place that can be achieved only by someone who knows it intimately.

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."—The Nation "Bleak and unsentimental but blessedly free of self-indulgence, these poems give the feeling of being absolutely essential."—Library Journal "Galvin [has] the virtues of precise observation and original language . . . a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make [each] poem an architectural pleasure."—Harvard Review In his first collection in seven years, James Galvin expands upon his signature spare and gnomic lyric as he engages restrained astonishment, desire, and loss in a confessional voice. Whether considering masterpieces of painting or describing the austere landscape of his native Wyoming ranchlands, Galvin turns to highly imagistic yet intimate narratives to rain down compassion within isolation. From "On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses": On starless, windless nights like this I imagine I can hear the wedding dresses Weeping in their closets, Luminescent with hopeless longing, Like hollow angels. They know they will never be worn again. Who wants them now, After their one heroic day in the limelight? Yet they glow with desire In the darkness of closets. James Galvin passionately depicts the rural American West and the interactions between humans and nature in his best-selling memoir The Meadow and his novel Fencing the Sky. Galvin is also the author of several volumes of poetry and teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He divides his time between Iowa and Wyoming.

Joss is the seventh son of the Supreme Overlord of the Universe, and all he gets to do is deliver pies. That's right: pies. Of course these pies actually hold the secrets of the universe between their buttery crusts, but they're still pies. Joss comes from a family of overachievers, and is happy to let his older brothers shine. But when Earth suddenly disappears, Joss is tasked with the not-so-simple job of bringing it back. With the help of an outspoken girl from Earth named Annika, Joss embarks on the adventure of a lifetime and learns that the universe is an even stranger place than he'd imagined.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NEWBERY HONOR AWARD WINNER A classic YA novel about a teenage girl searching for a sense of home and family that celebrates the true spirit of independence on the American frontier. For most of her life, sixteen-year-old Hattie Brooks has been shuttled from one distant relative to another. Tired of being Hattie Here-and-There, she summons the courage to leave Iowa and move all by herself to Vida, Montana, to prove up on her late uncle’s homestead claim. Under the big sky, Hattie braves hard weather, hard times, a cantankerous cow, and her own hopeless hand at the cookstove. Her quest to make a home is championed by new neighbors Perilee Mueller, her German husband, and their children. For the first time in her life, Hattie feels part of a family, finding the strength to stand up against Traft Martin’s schemes to buy her out and against increasing pressure to be a “loyal” American at a time when anything—or anyone—German is suspect. Despite daily trials, Hattie continues to work her uncle’s claim until an unforeseen tragedy causes her to search her soul for the real meaning of home. This young pioneer's story is lovingly stitched together from Kirby Larson’s own family history and the sights, sounds, and scents of homesteading life.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES • SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews • “Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times With a new afterword by the author That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

"Steeped in the history of the French-Canadian voyageur journeys in the early 1800s in North America, Waters Like the Sky is a story of a well-educated teen boy who despises his fancy schooling and longs for a more adventurous life. Andrae's fate changes when a letter with a royal seal arrives. He discovers he has French noble blood. He is part of a family in France, has a brother he's never met, and an enemy who wants him dead. Determined to locate his brother and set things right, Andrae sets out to search for Denis in the only way open to him--becoming a voyageur. Unaccustomed to the hard voyageur life, Andrae uses his only advantage--his education. He fights to earn the respect of his fellow voyageurs and gains many life lessons on his quest to track down his brother. Will he be able to reach Denis before the evil one the natives call the windigo finds him first?"--Page 4 of cover.