Five Skies

Ron Carlson, known for his short stories, returns to the novel form after roughly thirty years. The book follows three men who spend a summer in the high Rocky Mountains on a single construction job. Arthur Key, a huge and quiet man, is running from his part in a betrayal in Los Angeles and finds work as a carpenter in southern Idaho. He is taken on alongside Ronnie Panelli, an easygoing drifter, to build a stunt ramp beside a deep chasm. Their foreman is Darwin Gallegos, a local ranch hand whose anger is aimed at God, other people, and life itself.

As the three men work through the project, each gradually opens up in careful, deeply felt ways. Carlson tells the story in an intimate, graceful voice, and the book takes on a biblical, almost spiritual weight that grows out of ordinary labor and ordinary conversation.