The Desert Sky Before Us
Review by Gabriela V. Everett
Award-winning author Anne Valente is not afraid to confront the aches of life; her novels explore tragedy on both personal and social scales. The Desert Sky Before Us follows two sisters, Rhiannon and Billie — a former race car driver and arsonist —who take to the highways in a journey to scatter their mother’s ashes in Utah. Their mother, having passed away three months before Billie’s release, leaves them instructions and geographic coordinates to visit as they travel, leaving clues as to her motivation for sending them on their trip.
The book opens with Rhiannon in her Mustang, waiting for Billie to be released from Decatur Correctional Facility. It is both the aftermath of loss and the start of reconnection, as Rhiannon has not seen Billie in six years. Valente creates a pensive mood as former correctional inmates wait for rides that may never come to homes they no longer know — all while Rhiannon drifts in and out of how her sister has been changed by her incarceration.
Various documents bookend chapters: notes on nature preserves, an interview with Rhiannon after a NASCAR race, and articles questioning a string of mysterious plane crashes. These snippets highlight the emotional nuance Valente uses in her work, and it reads akin to poetry.
Forgiveness comes to the forefront of the work, and the distance between Rhiannon and Billie is summed up: “Rhiannon knows the word sorry will never find its way from Billie’s throat. . . .” In pursuit of closure regarding their mother’s death, they equally face the same concerning themselves and their truths.
Valente writes with a prose-like structure, crafting lines that bite: “He could turn away. Go home. Call her ugly. Call her worse.”
Her style generates an atmosphere of disconnect for the characters — fitting, given they have all been separated for long periods. Dialogue exists without quotations, similar to a description or recollection. It emphasizes their slow-to-heal journey, and by the end of the book, the sisters find a quiet unity.
These characters are lovingly flawed; they are human, motivated by their desires and occasionally hurting each other with their drive. They are sketches of people you could encounter in a coffee shop — real, trying their best to reconstruct their lives and stay afloat in a world that offers more questions than answers.
The Desert Sky Before Us is a hybrid. Its form allows room for large metaphors and reader interpretation and makes you hunt for answers, much like Rhiannon and Billie as they scavenge for their mother’s clues on the road. The book is not a handbook or simple slice of life but a peek into the endurance it takes to find peace after you have been aching alone.
Published by Harper Collins
ISBN: 9781432865658
545 pages