Red Sky at Morning (Perennial Classics) - Softcover

Bradford, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060931906 ISBN 13: 9780060931902

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1999

Synopsis

The classic coming-of-age story set during World War II about the enduring spirit of youth and the values in life that count.

In the summer of 1944, Frank Arnold, a wealthy shipbuilder in Mobile, Alabama, receives his volunteer commission in the U.S. Navy and moves his wife, Ann, and seventeen-year-old son, Josh, to the family's summer home in the village of Corazon Sagrado, high in the New Mexico mountains. A true daughter of the Confederacy, Mrs. Arnold finds it impossible to cope with the quality of life in the largely Hispanic village and, in the company of Jimbob Buel--an insufferable, South-proud, professional houseguest-- takes to bridge and sherry. Josh, on the other hand, becomes an integral member of the Sagrado community, forging friendships with his new classmates, with the town's disreputable resident artist, and with Amadeo and Excilda Montoya, the couple hired by his father to care for their house.

Josh narrates the story of his fateful year in Sagrado and, with deadpan, irreverent humor, reveals the events and people who influence his progress to maturity. Unhindered by his mother's disdain for these "tacky, dusty little Westerners," Josh comes into his own and into a young man's finely formed understanding of duty, responsibility, and love. One of America's finest coming-of-age novels, Red Sky at Morning remains a "first novel to rejoice in" (Harper's) and "a novel of consequence" (New York Times Book Review).

About this title

Review:

"A sort of Catcher in the Rye out West....What makes the book a true delight is the deadpan, irreverent humor with which Josh tells the story... No brief review can do justice to Mr. Bradford's book."--Washington Post Book World

"Bradford believes in the human comedy the way DiMaggio believes in baseball, the way Nureyev believes in the dance, the way people, no matter what, believe in laughing when they might just as well be weeping."--Richard Condon, novelist

"A refreshing book, straightforward, funny, touching and, despite the caricatures and wisecracks and passed-over problems, true."--New York Times Book Review

"Red Sky at Morning is a minor marvel: it is a novel of paradox, of identity, of an overwhelming YES to life that embraces with wonder what we are pleased to call the human condition. In short, a work of art."--Harper Lee

About the Author:

Richard Bradford was an American novelist, best known for his 1968 novel Red Sky at Morning, a film version of which was released in 1971. He also wrote a second novel, So Far From Heaven. He died in 2002, in Santa Fe, NM.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0060931906
• ISBN 13: 9780060931902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256