Editorial Reviews for Sky Bridge
From Publishers Weekly
"How do we people go around in regular life, anyway, when the truth is that we're wondering about love, and death, and things that are on the verge of smashing us to pieces?" Libby, the 22-year-old narrator of Pritchett's compassionate, finely observed first novel, finds herself asking the big questions sooner than she might have expected when her beloved younger sister, Tess, quits their one-horse Colorado town, leaving Libby to care for her newborn daughter. Tess had wanted an abortion, but Libby, a grocery store clerk, said she'd care for the baby; little did she expect that Tess would vanish the minute she got discharged from the hospital. Thoughtful, serious Libby muddles her way through mothering darling, colicky Amber, getting no-nonsense advice from her prickly ranch-hand mother, warm counsel from ranch owner Baxter and fumbling, halfhearted attempts at support from the boyfriend she isn't sure she really loves. The novel's graceful, leisurely pace and genial characters overlay darker, tenser narrative threads, which include Tess's involvement in smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants. Pritchett, who proved herself an astute observer of rural Colorado's hardy inhabitants in her award-winning story collection, Hell's Bottom, Colorado, offers an amiable, moving story of love, duty and family.
From Booklist
Even in the closest families, there should be limits as to what one sister can demand of another. When 19-year-old Tess becomes pregnant, Libby talks her out of having an abortion by promising to raise the baby herself. As Tess drives off to the big city, the reality of just what Libby has signed on for begins to hit home. At 22, Libby should be the one embarking on a life of her own, not abandoned in a rundown cabin on a two-bit ranch in rural Colorado, stuck with her own mother, who is unabashedly contemptuous of the challenge Libby has assumed. Proud and resolute, Libby struggles to raise Amber, a fight made harder by the loss of her boyfriend, her job, and a custody battle with Amber's father. In this spare yet haunting portrait of the American West, Pritchett's powerful, poetic voice speaks with clarity, wisdom, and passion about country, family, and one young woman's majestic spirit. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
This captivating first novel is the story of Libby, a 22-year-old checkout clerk who has been a mother figure to her younger sister. Now pregnant, 18-year-old Tess wants to have an abortion, but Libby convinces her to have the baby, saying that she herself will raise the infant. Within days of delivering, Tess indeed takes off to pursue her own dreams outside their small Colorado town, and Libby finds herself raising Amber while trying to deal with an alcoholic, abusive mother and make sense of her own life. Libby is a protagonist who is not afraid to confront her fears and loneliness; this very openness gives her a depth and strength that others draw on. At the same time that she is trying to make a life for herself and Amber, the baby's father reenters the picture, promising a custody battle, and Libby discovers that Tess has gotten involved in smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants. The primary and secondary plots captivate readers and ensure an ending that is anything but trite. Reminiscent of Billie Letts's Where the Heart Is (Warner, 1995), this book offers a gritty but redeeming picture of a family that never quite lets go of hope, and characters who are not soon forgotten.-Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA
Other praise:
“Laura Pritchett writes with considerable skill and a fine sensitivity, and in Sky Bridge she manages to give us a vivid modern tale of believable goodness—despite all the odds against that.”- Kent Haruf
“At the center of Laura Pritchett’s Sky Bridge is the courageous notion that a world that makes us all strangers makes us also, necessarily, family. The beauty of the book lies in the way Pritchett, quietly and without fanfare, explores this difficult balance.”—Kent Meyers
Overview: Twenty-two-year-old Libby works at a small grocery town in a luckless town in the rural West. Endlessly daydreaming, she sees herself becoming an artist, moving out of her mother’s house to have her own, learning to play guitar. When her younger sister Tess becomes pregnant, Libby y promising to raise the child, a promise she never really imagines she’ll have to keep.
Thrust into instant motherhood when Tess gives birth and then promptly leaves, Libby finds herself caring for a crying infant and overwhelmed by the task. The colorful cast of characters who rise up to support her—from the hippie beekeeper, Ed Mongers, to Miguel Mendoza, a single father widowed by suicide, and various other folks from the small ranching community—round out this spirited story. Libby’s lucid, painfully honest observations and her complex interiority comes with a fresh perspective on what it means to inhabit a world that has little room for optimism. Pritchett’s characters deal with the hidden underbelly of rural life—the drug trafficking, the people who make a living driving “illegals” over the border, the litany of low-wage jobs. As Libby struggles to make sense of the world, she discovers humor and courage in unlikely places. As the beekeeper Ed Monger says to Libby, “I think we should all be living more dangerous lives. We have to be careful, yes. But when we get too fearful, we become small.”
Hell’s Bottom, Colorado
Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prizeand the PEN USA Award for Fiction
Praise for Hell’s Bottom, Colorado:
Publisher’s Weekly writes that “Pritchett’s debut is an admirable, steely-eyed collection of stories and vignettes featuring a family of ranchers in mountain-shadowed Colorado. . . . Pritchett, raised a rancher herself, writes beautifully about the hard work and casual cruelty of ranch life. . . . Fans of Annie Proulx’s Close Range and Jon Billman’s When We Were Wolves should enjoy this visceral, accomplished collection.”
The Rocky Mountain News says that the book “displays the talent of a brilliant, new writer.”
Booklist writes, “Pritchett excels at juxtaposing the sensuous with the severe, the rapturous with the repugnant.”
Kirkus notes that the book “vividly conveys a world where decency and humanity are challenged repeatedly, and diminished, yet still manage to gain small, significant victories.”
Overview: On Hell’s Bottom Ranch, a section of land below the Front Range, there are women like Renny who prefer a “little hell swirled with their heaven” and men like Ben, her husband, who’s “gotten used to smoothing over Renny’s excesses.” There is a daughter who plays it too safe and a daughter plagued by only “half-wanting” what life has to offer. The ranch has been the site of birth and deaths of both cattle and children, as well as moments of amazing harmony and clear vision. Focusing on one extended ranching family in Colorado, this book balances gritty material with genuine warmth and understanding of character. This collection of short stories was also a recommended title in “Book Sense 76,” the publication of independent booksellers.
Other Books: Comeback Wolves: Western Writers Welcome the Wolf Home.
For more information, see www.comebackwolves.com
You can buy these books from your independent local bookstore or from Milkweed Editions at www.milkweed.org.
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