A boy's nomadic life in Mongolia is under threat in a novel that
"captures the mountains, valleys and steppes in all their surpassing
beauty and brutality" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).
In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, a young shepherd boy
comes of age, tending his family's flocks on the mountain steppes and
knowing little of the world beyond the surrounding peaks. But his
nomadic way of life is increasingly disrupted by modernity.
This confrontation comes in stages. First, his older siblings leave the
family yurt to attend a distant boarding school. Then the boy's
grandmother dies, and with her his connection to the old ways. But
perhaps the greatest tragedy strikes when his dog, Arsylang--"all that
was left to me"--ingests poison set out by the boy's father to protect
his herd from wolves. "Why is it so?" Dshurukawaa cries out in despair
to the Heavenly Blue Sky, to be answered only by the wind.
Rooted in the oral traditions of the Tuvan people, The Blue Sky weaves
the timeless story of a boy poised on the cusp of manhood with the story
of a people on the threshold.
"Thrilling. . . . Tschinag makes it easy for his readers to fall into
the beautiful rhythms of the Tuvans' daily life." --Los Angeles Times
Book Review
"In this pristine and concentrated tale of miraculous survival and
anguished loss, Tschinag evokes the nurturing warmth of a family within
the circular embrace of a yurt as an ancient way of life lived in
harmony with nature becomes endangered." --Booklist
