The Sky Fisherman

July 31, 1995
Culver, a mild-mannered and likable young teen growing up in a small Northwestern town, is trying to sort out a great deal of confusing stuff: his father's drowning death; the bigotry evident against local Indians; his mother's dislike for his charismatic Uncle Jake; the way his outlaw stepfather, wanted for torching a railroad compound, keeps popping in and out of his life. Culver's interests run to the physical-basketball, fly-fishing and working at his uncle's bait-and-tackle shop. It's there that he receives an informal education at the feet of a group of men-dubbed the ``backroom boys'' by narrator Culver-who hang around the store and who include a cropduster, a glue-mixer at the local lumber mill, a baker, a local radio personality and an enigmatic Indian sheriff. Culver is seduced by the group's easy joviality and his Uncle Jake's heroic streak, which manifests when a fire claims the mill. But the boy discovers a secret involving his dead father that drives a wedge between himself and his uncle, and that threatens to make an adult out of him before his time. Lesley (Winterkill) is a smooth and talented writer, with a pleasing touch for detail and an unwavering confidence. His material tends to the sentimental: his central metaphor, a skyful of invented constellations as related to Culver by Uncle Jake, is an easy image, neither compelling nor powerful. But Culver is an unusually appealing character, and when the novel's close toes a maudlin line, it feels almost earned.

September 15, 1995
Lesley's first two novels--"Winterkill" (1984) and "River Song" (1989)--examined the struggle of Native Americans to preserve the wisdom of their ancestors in the face of opposition from the bureaucratic white world. This time the tenuous coexistence between whites and Indians in the contemporary Northwest is again an element in the story, but the focus is on the coming-of-age of a young white teenager, Culver, growing up with his mother and his uncle Jake, a river guide and the owner of a sporting goods store. Lurking beneath the perfectly captured camaraderie of Jake and the good ol' boys hanging out at the store is the unresolved question of how Culver's father died in a river accident. Answering this question forces Culver to confront his family's flawed history and eventually leads him to his own epiphany on the river. Lesley has a real feel for the way the intimacy and the pettiness of small-town life push and pull both young and old. Though the novel contains a few too many flights of fly-fishing-inspired lyricism, it further establishes the author as a major voice in the fiction of the American West." ((Reviewed Sept. 15, 1995))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1995, American Library Association.)