**"Red Sky at Morning is a minor marvel: it is a novel of paradox, of
identity, of an overwhelming YES to life that embraces with wonder what
we are pleased to call the human condition. In short, a work of art." --
Harper Lee
**
Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a sort of Catcher in
the Rye out West," Richard Bradford's Red Sky at Morning is the
classic coming-of-age story set during World War II about the enduring
spirit of youth and the values in life that count.
In the summer of 1944, Frank Arnold, a wealthy shipbuilder in Mobile,
Alabama, receives his volunteer commission in the U.S. Navy and moves
his wife, Ann, and seventeen-year-old son, Josh, to the family's summer
home in the village of Corazon Sagrado, high in the New Mexico
mountains. A true daughter of the Confederacy, Ann finds it impossible
to cope with the quality of life in the largely Hispanic village and, in
the company of Jimbob Buel--an insufferable, South-proud, professional
houseguest--takes to bridge and sherry. Josh, on the other hand, becomes
an integral member of the Sagrado community, forging friendships with
his new classmates, with the town's disreputable resident artist, and
with Amadeo and Excilda Montoya, the couple hired by his father to care
for their house.
Josh narrates the story of his fateful year in Sagrado and, with
irresistibly deadpan, irreverent humor, describes the events and people
who influence his progress to maturity. Unhindered by his mother's
disdain for these "tacky, dusty little Westerners," Josh comes into his
own and into a young man's finely formed understanding of duty,
responsibility, and love.
