One of the most violent chapters in American history is also one of the least discussed. Big Sky illuminates the events of the Tulsa race riots in a modern, high-paced story that combines historical fiction, magical realism and a fresh (non-stuffy) voice.
Big Sky follows its main character, an unsuccessful mixed-race rock musician from Chicago, as he hitchhikes to his stepmother’s funeral in Tulsa, Oklahoma soon after the beginning of the new millennium. The story that unfolds as he makes his way is one of two families, one white, the other black, who were tied together by the events of Tulsa’s 1921 race riots. One family followed an industrial and political path that may be endangered by the other’s artistic and journalistic pursuits that emanate from a grandfather who was one part Heidegger, one part Nostradamus, and one part James Baldwin. The main character is followed on his journey South by a brilliant biologist who is obsessed with the wisdom of plants and may have the key to their interconnection
Sprawling in voice, locale, and era, Big Sky tackles the big questions, those where ideology meets biology meets art meets metaphysics. They all converge in this timely debut novel, with its characters shaped, however unwittingly, by a century-old, true life tragedy that may ammount ultimately to the Rosetta Stone of America.
-D.R. Haney, author Banned for Life, Subversia, and Death Valley Superstars
Evocative and precise. There’s a whole world here, and you’re drawn in instantly
-Nick Burd, author The Vast Fields of Ordinary