Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2019
256 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A "riveting and timely" (Jess Walter) Montana story about the unbreakable bond between a young man and the abandoned boy put in his care, as old grievances of land and blood are visited upon them.
Wendell Newman, a young ranch hand in Montana, has recently lost his mother, leaving him an orphan. His bank account holds less than a hundred dollars, and he owes back taxes on what remains of the land his parents owned, as well as money for the surgeries that failed to save his mother's life.
An unexpected deliverance arrives in the form of seven-year-old Rowdy Burns, the mute and traumatized son of Wendell's incarcerated cousin. When Rowdy is put under his care, what begins as an ordeal for Wendell turns into a powerful bond, as he comes to love the boy more than he ever thought possible. That bond will be stretched to the breaking point during the first legal wolf hunt in Montana in more than thirty years, when a murder ignites a desperate chase. Caught on the wrong side of a disaffected fringe group, Wendell is determined both to protect Rowdy and to avoid the same violent fate that claimed his own father.
A gripping story set in a fractured and misunderstood community, Fall Back Down When I Die is a haunting and unforgettable tale of sacrificial love.
"Starred Review. A heart-rending tale of family, love and violence...Wilkins packs a lot of story and stylistic wallop into this gripping, outstanding novel." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Suffused with a sense of longing, loss, and the desire for change - asking deep questions about our place in the landscape and what, if anything, we are owed - this is a remarkable and unforgettable first novel." - Booklist
"Joe Wilkins has risen to a very special peak with this heartrending novel of hard living and lonesome hope in the vast American landscape. I cannot praise it enough." - Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of the national bestsellers The House of Broken Angels and The Hummingbird's Daughter
"The poetry of this beautiful novel isn't only in the language - and it's certainly in that - but also in Joe Wilkins's keen understanding of the Bull Mountains in eastern Montana, of the people who have left their mark on the land there, or tried to erase it, and of the mysterious complexities of the human heart that drive us to one side of the law or the other." - Elizabeth Crook, author of The Which Way Tree
"Joe Wilkins is a writer of great power and heart, and Fall Back Down When I Die is a riveting and timely novel." - Jess Walter, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins
"Fall Back Down When I Die is a masterpiece...In prose as rugged and beautiful as the story's Montana setting, Wilkins has written one of the best novels I've read in years. An absolutely stunning book in every way." - Nickolas Butler, author of the national bestseller Shotgun Lovesongs
"With a passion matched only by his compassion, Joe Wilkins has crafted a novel that perfectly explicates the clash between the cowboys and ranchers of the old West and the environmentalists and seekers of the new...full of vivid descriptions of the Montana landscape that are spot-on and swoon-worthy." - Pam Houston, author of the national bestsellers Cowboys Are My Weakness and Sight Hound
"In an electric narrative that busts out in a rare rural poetry when you least expect it, this brilliant novel places red state zeitgeist and gray wolves squarely in its sights and, in the end, shoots both, to my grateful amazement, with deep understanding and compassion. What a balm, Joe Wilkins's eloquent voice of mercy calling out in the post-Western night." - David James Duncan, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of The Brothers K and The River Why
This information about Fall Back Down When I Die was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joe Wilkins's memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, won the GLCA New Writers Award for nonfiction, and his work has appeared in the Georgia Review, the Harvard Review, and Slate, among many other periodicals. He is a Pushcart Prize winner and a finalist for the National Magazine Award and the PEN/USA Award. Wilkins lives with his wife and two children in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield College.
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