Five Skies (Lib)(CD) [Audio CD]

The description above of what FIVE SKIES is about belies its tenderness and its deep regard for men who have suffered enormous personal and emotional setbacks in life and who are trying to get back on track. This isn't a Hemingway novel, quite, because Carlson knows how to write about women as well. But the focus here is on men who turn to the common utility of hard work to begin the process of restructuring their lives . . . if such a thing can be done.

What drives this novel are the pasts of the three men who've come together in the Idaho wilderness on the edge of a canyon to construct a jumping platform for a motorcycle stunt that's to take place later in the summer. Arthur Key, the main character, is a sturdy man of middle age who blames himself for the death of his younger brother (this is not a spoiler, for it's revealed early on that Art is in Idaho to regroup and recover this one loss). Darwin leads the team, a man who is so powerfully angry at God for taking his wife that he's almost made inarticulate by it and all he can do is to find release in the everyday modes of the construction site and a day in the canyon fishing (it's this sequence that might remind some readers of Nick Adams in Michigan from IN OUR TIME but rendered more imagistically colorful by Carlson's astonishing prose). The younger boy Ronnie is barely fresh from being a juvenile delinquent and knows virtually nothing about the world (including the world of girls) and we follow Carlson as he is taken under wing by the two older men and shown "the ropes". Carlson has often written of families, focusing on the relationships between men and women; here he focuses on the fine art of fathers raising sons . . . and brothers looking out for one another.

This is what makes this novel so poignant--the way Carlson writes about these men; how they interact; what they can teach to one another. You see all three men grow (some more than others) as they interrelate and it's clear from the detail of the construction itself (building the ramp and the bleachers) that Carlson (like Hemingway) knows whereof he speaks. You get no real sense of plot, but you know that "somehing" is driving the book and it all falls about Art Key's shoulders. He's a man who, like all persons (not just men) who realizes that one must learn how to recognize stupidity in life and how to avoid it. At the same time Key learns that he cannot save those who cannot recognize such stupidities (though his one grand act in the end of the novel does much to show just what he's learned and how much he means to share it with the world). This is a wonderful book, written in a kind of prose that seems effortless yet clearly considered, word by word. Carlson is one of the few writers of his generation who seems not to be straining to be one of the Big Boys. He's just a naturally gifted storyteller and he's made this little swatch of Idaho (and the people who live there) come alive. I will remember these three men for quite some time to come.

Well into this novel, I was ready to give it six stars for the beauty of its vision and the strength of its characterization - in particular the way it describes exactly how men work together and guardedly learn to trust each other. The gentle needling humor in the sparse exchanges of dialogue and the focus on work to be done, plus the soul-satisfying nature of work well done, accurately represent a quiet masculine world that is seldom seen in fiction. I instantly recognized the three men in this story because I know them from life. Carlson has captured them, the way they deal with pain and loss of pride, and the way they slowly recover from both, in a way that is utterly believable.

Placing his three characters for a summer on a work site in southern Idaho, 20 miles from the nearest settlement, Carlson adds the healing effects of a vast, isolated environment under a big sky. The only thing that compromises the men is the dubious nature of the work itself - their time, energies and intelligence (though well paid for) serve the wasteful and ephemeral appetites of popular culture and its willing promoters. The river gorge that runs near their campsite eventually exacts a kind of toll for the hubris that drives the entire enterprise.

I haven't read a book so well written and so gripping in its portrayal of men since James Salter's "Solo Faces," which pursues similar themes in a world of physical extremes (alpine mountain climbing). And almost never does one read of the simple process of an older man taking under his wing a lost and troubled younger man and with gentle humor and mentoring setting his life back on track. By the end of the novel, a line like "Don't feed the rabbits, Ronnie," carries with it volumes of emotional meaning that can shake a simple reader like me to the core. I'm still struggling with the ending of the novel and not sure about those six stars anymore, but Ron Carlson has won me as a fan, hands down. My hope is that he is found by the many readers he deserves and who deserve him.

"Five Skies," Ron Carlson's exquisitely crafted and spiritually resonant novel about three emotionally-damaged men who discover themselves while working on a construction project in remote Idaho, illustrates the power of literary epiphany. The three protagonists initially know little of each other, each recognizing that the two others hold devastating secrets, unspoken pain and unalloyed confusion as to life's ultimate purpose. Carlson is little short of brilliant as he illuminates the hidden recesses of the human heart and draws the reader into the most important project the men are responsible for achieving: self-understanding. "Five Skies" is both moving and powerful; the novel has an integrity and dignity as broad as the expansive Idaho skies and as deep as the gorge near which his protagonists labor.

Foreman Darwin Gallegos impulsively hires two day laborers, Arthur Key and Ronnie Panelli, to help him build a stunt ramp. The summer-long project essentially isolates the three men and forces them to come to grips with the forces that drove them to such a location. Panelli is a two-bit juvenile delinquent, bewildered and ashamed at his criminal record and broken life. Gallegos flees from the shattering grief engendered by his wife's unexpected death; he is a human wreck -- angry, numb and frustrated. Key, who becomes the central character in the novel, is an over-sized, hands-on engineer, capable of visualizing a project and painstakingly careful so that every detail is in place. He is overwhelmed by guilt and shame, and Key's remorse eventually becomes the engine that fuels each character's journey to self-recognition and acceptance.

Integral to Carlson's treatment of epiphany is silence. Each protagonist struggles with language; often they find it impossible to articulate their anguish. Although Key senses that Gallegos would be a compassionate listener, the former takes weeks before finding the capability of speaking his heart. Then there is the awesome silence of Idaho's spellbinding environment. The gorge is so enormous; its sounds dwarf human voice and its deceiving perspectives mock human attempts to contain or control nature. Finally, there are the silences of the lengthy summer days spent at work, where unspoken companionship ultimately yields lasting relationships, and the vast silence of night, where star-splashed skies illuminate secrets and unleash constricted emotions.

"Five Skies" is no simple band-of-brothers adventure story. Spare and direct, this is a robust, trenchant novel, and Ron Carlson knows enough about torment to permit his characters to discover their own paths. As each man gains the moral courage to face himself, as the men slowly turn toward each other instead of away from their pain, the novel ascends its own heights. By its conclusion, "Five Skies" reaffirms our belief in human dignity.

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