The Sky Fisherman

by Craig Lesley

Book Overview

With his third novel, Craig Lesley comes into his own as an important American writer. Combining the familial loyalties and betrayals of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It with the dead-on... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312147384
• ISBN13: 9780312147389
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Another great novel by Lesley

Craig Lesley has the uncanny ability to draw readers into his narrative immediately. His characterizations and dialogue are so realistic that it's often difficult to believe his works are fiction. In `The Sky Fisherman,' Lesley writes something of a coming of age story, in which the book's narrator Culver Martin comes to terms with his father's death years earlier and the circumstances that surround and haunt relations between himself, his mother and his uncle. At the same time, Lesley provides a real picture of relations in a small town near an Indian reservation. Here Lesley brings to life the complex feelings and resentments on both sides of this line, i.e. among the town's mill-workers, farmers, etc. and the Indians on the other. Also well-rendered is the love for and obsession with fishing and hunting on the part of the locals, which the author brings to life in his evocative descriptions of the landscape - although he fictionalizes many place-names, it's obvious that he is referring to the Deschutes River in Oregon. This is certainly Lesley's best novel.

Energizing and provocative

Craig Lesley is one of those writers that well-meaning acquaintances tried to push on me several years ago. Hence, I resisted much of his work, and reluctantly read _Winterkill_ one afternoon out of a sense of obligation. After reading _The Sky Fisherman_, I'll likely become one of those who pushes his work on others.The story is narrated by Culver, a teenager at the time of the events in the book, and told from a point of view some time later. These events were decisive moments in Culver's coming of age, and marked a critical time of transition for the network of small towns at the center. Young Culver must find the way to deal with the traumas of his father's death, his step-father's failures, his mother's fears, and more adventure helping his uncle Jake than most young men are called upon to survive. Culver's drive to know more about his father brings out buried conflicts that threaten to destroy the little bit of stability that anchors his existence. Lesley gives Culver a voice through these struggles that offers a gripping narrative. Culver's youth and inexperience prior to the momentous events come through clearly in his reflections as an adult. There is wisdom in Culver's perspective, but Lesley avoids the pitfalls of forcing this wisdom on the reader.In some respects, this book is like a large number of other coming-of-age Western novels, from _Huckleberry Finn_ to _A River Runs Through It_. With its setting in border towns near an Indian Reservation, and communities where the economic life centers on lumber and river recreation, the book aptly reflects life in the rural West. Unlike so many other such novels, however, Lesley allows a sensitive and perceptive portrayal of Indian-white relations into the heart of the book, but without making race relations the driving force of the narrative. In doing so, he may get closer to the heart of the West than most of the novelists and historians who have made the effort.This novel is a serious work of fiction, entertaining and provocative. It stimulated me as a reader in several ways. I'm eager to return to _Winterkill_, as well as Lesley's other novels. I'm stimulated to make a dent in my pile of unread books by a host of other writers. And, I'm provoked to write by Lesley's powerful handling of the language. In addition, reading this book the week prior to a steelheading trip on the Deschutes River also proved to be good timing. This book energized me in a fundamentally important way: it reminded me of the reasons money saved from avoiding a cable-TV subscription is well-spent on literature.

A wonderfully meandering read

I read this book in the course of two sun-filled afternoons, sitting on a hammock. The book, much like the afternoons, was leisurely paced and ultimately quite enjoyable. Lesley does a fine job of weaving a wonderful fabric of character development - by the end of the novel, you almost feel like one of the boys at the store, throwing good-natured jabs at one another. I appreciated the vagueness and ambiguity around the sub-plots, allowing the reader to decide which events were critical and which weren't. Much like the river he aptly describes, the book had many channels, eddies and currents, all painted with a deft literary brush. Well worth the read.

haunting and captivating

Having just completed a raft trip on the deschutes river, this book was given to me by a friend. It captured me from the first page and held me through the last. My experience in growing up near a similar railroad siding and having friends who traveled and worked on the railroad then spending the last twenty years guiding on rivers was captured to even the little details. This book so mirrors my experience that I ended up reading it in a single sitting. Lesley's characters are real, the experience he describes is real and the tragedies experienced along the river are so real as to be nearly non-fictional. This is a must read, I have ordered every other book he has written!

Wonderfully told story of coming of age

Lesley does a great job describing the awareness of Culver as he meets challenges growing up without a father. Culver's mother is a strong influence on the boy, but the real character he tries to emulate is his uncle who is a real outdoor's man. I have enjoyed all of Lesley's books and this one was also very good.