Fall Back Down When I Die

Montana’s rugged beauty is poetically evoked in Wilkins’s fine debut. The story is divided into three narratives. First, readers meet Wendell Newman, a high school basketball star turned rancher whose family operation is in financial trouble after paying for his late mother’s failed surgeries. Things become even more complicated when he is asked to become guardian for his possibly mute, seven-year-old cousin, Rowdy Burns, whose mother has just been arrested for possession of methamphetamines. Next, there is Gillian Houlton, an assistant principal who is having a difficult time raising her teenage daughter, Maddy, after the death of her husband, a game warden who was killed by a rancher. Finally, readers get the written apologia of a man named Verl, who is on the run from the law and hiding out in the mountains. The three stories converge when a militia group, the Bull Mountain Resistance, shows up at Wendell’s door just as a deputy sheriff and social worker arrive to check up on Rowdy. Shots are fired, and Wendell is forced to flee into the mountains with Rowdy and Maddy. Though the plot depends on too many coincidences, the novel achieves an undeniable cumulative emotional power as the fates of its memorable characters play out. This is an accomplished first novel, notable in particular for its strong depiction of the timeless landscape of Montana’s big sky country. [em](Mar.) [/em]