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James Galvin opens his first novel with a shocking, seemingly inexplicable murder--horseman Mike Arans closes on a pistol-packing motorist named Merriwether Snipes, throws a rope and snaps his neck--and then proceeds to illuminate why it happened, what it means, and how Mike deals with the consequences. Though billed as a novel, Fencing the Sky is in fact a more deeply fictionalized continuation of The Meadow, Galvin's partly historic, partly imagined evocation of a way of life that took hold on an upland Wyoming ranch for a century and then blew away.

If The Meadow is elegiac, Fencing the Sky is angry and blackly humorous. This is the grim, greedy '90s, when swaggering developers like Merriwether Snipes ride the range in their ATV's, carving up the old homesteads into 40-acre ranchettes and making life hell for the few decent people who remain. Galvin makes three of these holdouts his heroes--Oscar Rose, who supports a cattle habit (and family) by working as a vet; Adkisson Trent, a doctor who inherited from his father a spectacular spread and a penchant for proud solitude; and Arans, the renegade, who fled from New Jersey to become a cowboy. The heat of the book rises from the connections and passions of these men--their women and work troubles, their unspoken bond with each other, their fury at Snipes and everything he represents.

Galvin, a poet, has assembled his narrative out of vivid shards, yet, despite the jump-cuts, this is an old-fashioned novel at heart, with heroes and villains, heartbreak and suspense, and characters so real you want to ride out and shake hands. The same themes, the same imagery, the same equine adoration crop up in Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry, but Galvin has a lighter touch, eschewing myth for the minute particulars of hard work and hard luck in a single community. Galvin can also crack a good joke, even though he knows as well as anyone that there's not a lot to laugh about under the big sky these days. --David LaskinBook Description

Customer Reviews (13)

A new perspective
Being from New Jersey, and having a log cabin in upstate NY where I feel I have my own little piece of paradise, this book was a shot to the gut.

When rich city folk buy up most of the unclaimed land out west, and disrespect that land by tearing it up with dirtbikes and ATV's, and spook the cattle and make life hard for the ranchers who have lived there and made livings the hard, good ol' way, it made me change the way I felt about my own cabin. Seeing and feeling how disrespectful these newcomers were is greatly felt through the characters we get to know in this book.

Told through a series of flashbacks while our protagonist is fleeing from the law on horseback, we come to know and love the fugitive who was only standing up for his own moral rights. While this is the main outline for the plot, the deeper, real intention is the abuse the government forced upon landowners and ranchers in the west, claiming rights to dig up land regardless of ownership.

Overall, a sad story that hits home with impact and gives you chills as you turn the last few pages. I particularly enjoyed the last quarter of the book the most. Please read and try to understand the loss many landowners out west feel about the destruction of good land, turned into a 'wilderness escape' for wealthy personel.

But what a preposterous ending!
I love Wyoming, and Galvin brought me to tears more than once with his loving and poetic descriptions of the land, the people who want to protect it, and his indictment ofhorrible Takers and Users who see only dollar signs in that beauty.

Galvin's message about the land and the Wyoming rancher's fading way of life should be read and treasured.But stop reading this book when you reach Page 235. I wish I had.

PS:or read Galvin's beautiful "The Meadow," also about the Medicine Bow area.Its characters are the people who lived there (composites of them are in "Fencing"), and while the ending is sad, it's believable.

Brilliant Book
Exceptional book, beautifully written, powerful story. I've bought as a gift for others many times.

Excellent story, wrong hero
There is no denying that Galvin has weaved an excellent tale in this book.His writing and the story are excellent.You want to know more with each snippet of the story regarding what's going to happen. Even though the scene's change and you don't really want them to change, you are thrilled when they do change because each part of the story is very captivating.The only exception to this is the end of the story. I won't say what happened, but the end read to me as though Galvin got a call from his publisher saying, "Finish it or lose the contract."I felt myself having to totally suspend reality and belief at the end and in general thinking, "this just doesn't fit."

The major drawback to the story is that more often than not, I kept thinking that the hero in the story was missing.The person who is very clearly the 'hero' is not much more than a vigilante, and as such the glorifications of his actions are misplaced.Additionally, the story has as a general idea a lament for the loss of the small time rancher in Wyoming and Colorado.This is not a lament I share.The small time rancher in Wyoming has a great deal of political influence anddespite Galvin's depiction of them as hardworking honest folk who only want the best for the land, the political realities are often far from that depiction.

This is a book that will start conversations, especially if you are at all familiar with the current state of events in the Rocky Mountain region.By that standard alone this book does warrant five stars, but because I disagree so heavily with the thesis and because the ending is so poorly constructed, I have to give it four stars.

Fugitive Cowboy On The Run in Wyoming
This is one of a number of modern Westerns I read in the winter of 2004-05.The others included: J. Robert Lennon's, "On The Night Plain," Annie Proulx' "Close Range"; Mark Spragg's "Fruit Of Stone", Ralph Beer's "The Blind Corral"; Gretel Ehrlich's "Heart Mountain", and David Long's "Blue Spruce", a collection of modern stories.I might also include Wallace Stegner's "Angle Of Repose" which is more of a historical Western though with more contemporary aspects, John Treadwell Nichols' "The New Mexico Trilogy",which seems to me now somewhat dated, or Rick De Marinis' "Year Of The Zinc Penny", set mostly in wartime L.A. in 1943 but about a family with Montana roots. If you only have time to read one--since they are somewhat repetitive, particularly in the areas of cattle or sheep ranching, horsemanship and descriptions of ranch life-- you might choose "Fencing The Sky" since it is one of the best, with Beer's great rather nostalgic novel perhaps second. This is a society in which tradition lasts longer than in some other areas of the country, certainly dating from the late 19th century.

All these novels & stories lament the passing of the Old West, but some--certainly "Fencing The Sky" and "Angle Of Repose" are also strikingly contemporary, dealing with such issues as 60's student radicalism,war service (Lennon, Beer, and Ehrlich) aggressive land development, and considerable ecological problems such as deforestation and strip mining which have laid waste to this part of the country, as Jared Diamond'srecent book "Collapse" also attests. Elk and elk hunting, and other naturalistic descriptions, are another subject common to all. At least three of the novels contain quite a lot of romance between siblings growing up on neighboring ranches in what will seem to some, including myself,to be a rather idyllic life, certainly the opposite of urban living.Some of the ranch details are truly inspired, such as a pack rat stealing from a cowboy in the middle of the night, or a square dance. Proulx' amazing award-winning stories are packed with historic details, in a limited space. Cowboys are unfortunately somewhat prone to alcoholism, also.Both Spragg and Galvin use a flashback technique in alternating chapters. Each novel is somewhat unique so that you can enjoy each but all have a great deal in common as well. Spragg's novel is most uniquely notable for its humour--a wayward wife,two old friends, an Indian, a dog, a physicist, and their misadventures.
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Customer Reviews (2)

Contemporary American poetry at its best
This book has the most memorable lines per page of any English poetry I have read.Galvin has done a superb job of taking the concrete details of life on a Western ranch and made of them a universal exploration ofhistory, human surviving, practical theology.Poem after poem allowsreading and rereading without exhausting the poem's potential.

Opening atrandom - "The sound of me getting norwhere. / Though I'm telling youthere are mountains so distant / It hurts to look" - what a wonderfulimage "so distant it hurts" - over and over these concrete,straight-talking Western poems catch you up in a new way of looking at theworld - new questions, new potential answers.

Go West
These poems describe an internal landscape as lonesome and unknowable, and yet as inescapably beautiful, as the Wyoming in which they are (mostly) set. Camp a few days alone in the wilderness of the Rockies -- where the rest of the world can seem simply not matter, but where a brutal naturewill not let the world be ignored --and you'll know what I mean. Read"Three Sonnets" or "Everyone Knows Whom the Saved Envy"and you are in that wilderness. ... Read more

Book Description

"X" is the kiss and betrayal, the embrace, the crucifixion, the mathematical unknown. In his sixth book of poems, James Galvin writes from a deep, philosophical engagement with the landscape and faces a "vertigo of solitude" with his marriage dissolved, his only daughter grown and gone, and the log house he built by hand abandoned. "What did I love that made me believe it would last?" he asks.

Something has to be true enough to be
Taken for granted.
In the hospital I saw
An old man
Caressing the face of an old woman.
This same man, young, caressed her face
In just that way.
That's the stillness
At the center of change-
A sadness worth dying for, I swear-
There is no other.
-from "Dying into What I've Done"

"James Galvin has a voice and a world, perhaps the two most difficult things to achieve in poetry."-The Nation

"In James Galvin we have a superior poet."-American Book Review

"Galvin's poems have the virtues of precise observation and original language, yes, but what he also brings to the table is a rigor of mind and firmness of phrasing which make the slightest of his poems an architectural pleasure."-Harvard Review

James Galvin has published five collections of poetry, most recently Resurrection Update: Collected Poems 1975–1997, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Lenore Marshall/The Nation Prize. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed prose book, The Meadow and a novel, Fencing the Sky. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, where he works as a rancher part of each year, and in Iowa City, where he is a member of the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Customer Reviews (3)

A Nightingale In Wyoming
A long time has past since John Keats slouched beneath a nightingale's nest in a plum tree to bemoan a world "Where but to think is to be full of sorrow/and leaden-eyed despairs/Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes/Or new love pine at them beyond to morrow." In our cool age, merely to think of any contemporary poet attempting to revisit themes endemic to lyric poetry since Sappho-desire, betrayal, trust, loss, loneliness and nature-awakens us to just how awesome a challenge it has become to say "my heart aches" without encountering a sea of guffaws.

But there is a nightingale in Wyoming, perched on a windowsill somewhere around James Galvin's ranch, and, as his sixth volume of poetry attests, he hears it loud and clear. Throughout "X," a collection of poems dwelling largely on his defunct marriage with fellow poet Jorie Graham, Galvin relies on the reader's own conscience and experience to finish each poem's meaning and affect, often transcending this basic rule of poetic law by digging deeper, excavating past losses and interrogating the difficult present, the struggle to go on. "After bad things happen we always live/A little more," Galvin observes in a language as simple as it is moving.

Routinely, Galvin steps out of the way of his poems to let them speak their way out of loss, stifling so much as a jaded chuckle in the textured silence following every final line. If the trick to conveying heartbreak convincingly in contemporary poetry is to simply tell what happened, rather than wrestling readers into feeling your pain, "X" provides ample instruction:

So out of love with life am I
No future will have me.
How can you lose a lie?
Well, you can. Easy.
All those years together, it seems,
Were posturings of goodbye.
For a time I raved.
Now I dwell in moods and reveries
Like frightened birds-

Galvin's bursts of thwarted longing are calculated with such tact and precise timing that they leap off of the page. By the time he gets around to saying, simply, "You are in love with/someone else" or "Why aren't you in love with me," the stage has already been so patiently set for a heaving sigh of empathy that only the dead could turn the page without at least a quiver in the chin. "Everyone drifts/in their disastrous bodies," Galvin writes in the book's first poem, "Little Dantesque." Just midway into this opening poem, the reader already has little reason to suspect that Galvin's lines are anything less thanflakes chipped from a soul in smolder. "Love's not love until it's lost," he writes in a later poem. The body and its carriage of lusts has indeed proven disastrous, as the "threadbare" speaker continually "drifts" along an impasse of things that were: "I had a happy medium/Had her reading out of my palm/The circus folded up and left."

Inevitably, there are fleeting descents into mushiness and melodramatics, as when Galvin signs off the poem "Dear May Eight," "Yours, May Eighth /Sincerely/Man under influence of sky." Additionally, a couple of poems read less like verse and more like tongue-twisting transcripts from some spelling-bee:

Algorithmic,
Epigenetic,
He ciphers ciphers.

Generally, though, the poems in "X" demonstrate the talents of a master craftsmen, fraught with biting, alliterative moments of rhythm-"O wretched road in rain," "an inner din unending"- and heroic first lines that could eat through a cage, "This is the wave of gravel where she left me off the edge of my life" or "The whole night sky went bad in the knees." Further, from the villanelle "River Edged With Ice" to the end-rhymed "Dear Nobody's Business" or sprawling, long-lined masterpieces such as "Earthquake," "Leap Year" and "Depending on the Wind," Galvin's poetic range knows no end.

"Where Once I was not alone, now each/closed door is panic, and spaces grow immense with memory, like/shadows at dusk," Galvin writes in "Depending on the Wind," a spare, precise eulogy to the house he built with his hands for a family fated to leave him, "Gone that arrangement of allegiances called family/we never really know before it ends/Like love itself, it isn't true till/then." Seemingly dizzy with crestfallen lines such as these, Galvin deftly skirts the boundary between authenticity and mawkishness, and whether it's a nightingale crooning on a nearby windowsill or a case of the old heartbreak that's got him down, James Galvin's "X" guarantees the sure rise of his stature.

Powerful, a bit single noted
Wonderful poet...I buy and read everything he writes, including his fiction/prose.Significant center section of this book is Galvin's (character's? or is it unabashedly autobiographical?) artful, moving...but ultimately 'one note'...crie de ceur about the betrayal of 'his'/his wife, implied divorce, and loss of daughter living in the same household. (I'm betting that in the somewhat small world of American poets there is a connection here to Galvin's previous marriage to another poet.) I suspect that when there is a selected poems, some of these will be retained, others dropped.The stronger poems are effective from every perspective.I was glad to see that some of Galvin's earlier concerns about the larger natural world appear here in the collection as well.

Best
Amazing, beautiful, heartfelt and lyrically stunning.This work may not only mark a personal best for the author, but for the decade as well.One to read and one to remember.To be honest, there is nothing to say but what is said, and so I'll be brief:don't miss it. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
An American Library Association Notable BookIn discrete disclosures joined with the intricacy of a spider's web, James Galvin depicts the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the few people who do not possess but are themselves possessed by this terrain. In so doing he reveals an experience that is part of our heritage and mythology. For Lyle, Ray, Clara, and App, the struggle to survive on an independent family ranch is a series of blameless failures and unacclaimed successes that illuminate the Western character. The Meadow evokes a sense of place that can be achieved only by someone who knows it intimately. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (36)

The Gift of Place
This non-linear piece of prose is elegant in its ability to take us to a place now long-gone.Capturing the life of a meadow on the high plains of the Colorado Wyoming border, Galvin creates a rich and vivid description of life over a 100 year span.
His main character, Lyle, is a true man of the old farming west and a lover of the land as it was.Galvin's ability to create mental pictures of people, land and life makes the book a enthralling read.
Don't expect it to move quickly, although the entire book is done in vignettes. Don't expect to remember all the characters, especially if you lay the book down and don't pick it back up for a few days.Even with these reading challenges, the book is a gift of great writing and a glimpse of the past.

What Can I Say?
This book is a keeper, one that is on my shelf for rereading. James Galvin's stories remind me of the old-timers in my life here in Arizona, their quirks yet because they authentic you can't help but adore them. Unfortunately many of these old-timers are gone now and I therefore can appreciate a book like The Meadow where such stories are preserved in time and preserved with beauty and poetry. Such an unusual and unexpected combination - I love this book and would now like to read Mr. Galvin's poetry.

I Wish I'd Written This
One of the most perfect books about the American West I've ever read. Actually, one of the most perfect books I've ever read, period. This is one of the contemporary books that I most admire. And the characters, particularly Lyle, have remained with me vividly. Galvin's novel, Fencing the Sky, is also a great book, more plotted and less lyrical, that people drawn to a more "typical" novel might love. And his poetry? God, don't even let me start. A telling piece of info: I have two copies of both The Meadow and Resurrection Update (his collected poems) so I always have one to give away.

Wondrously Great
Spare, poetic language creates a sense of place and time that envelops the reader. Lyle is one of my favorite characters of all time.

A Beautiful Book
This is the story of a meadow on the Colorado/Wyoming border and of the people who lived there.It is beautifully written, and the story rings true.I passed the book on to my husband who comes from a long line of do-it-yourselfers.I think he will enjoy reading about the independent Lyle who could make any tool he needed from scratch. ... Read more

Book Description
Direct, scriptural answers to kids' curiosity about God's Word will help parents use these challenging questions in guiding children toward a deeper awareness of Bible truths. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fun for the whole family, and interesting!
I bring home a lot of Christian books that I think my kids will read, but they rarely do. This one is different...my 8 and 10 yr olds are truly interested.They like to ask me the questions and see what kind of answerI come up with.With the scripture included, it's a devotional study indisquise! ... Read more

Book Description
SPANISH EDITION. Faith should come first. It is faith that takes us to heaven.We come to God through faith alone. Martin Luthers prolific writings as a pastor, theologian, scholar, Bible translator and father resound through the centuries. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Solid advice/solutions for today's relationships...
It is amazing that we do not teach young people (nor old people) about relationships.No need for a bookmark, just flip to today's date for rock solid advice on how to develop yourself and treat others.It also has a topic index if you want to study some relationship problem.Available in English (ISBN-10 310-26536-3 OR ISBN-13 978-0-310-26536-8) and in Spanish (ISBN 0-8297-4730-3)


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Book Description
A collection of inspiring Bible passages that parents can share with their children. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Our favorite book
My children and I love to read this book!It is a great way to help them learn scripture and the pictures are adorable.

beautifully illustrated inspirational book for toddlers
I read this book to my daughter when she's settling down for bedtime. Each page contains an illustration and a scripture passage representing one of God's promises. The bible reference is also given under the scripture. At the back of the book, there are approx. 6 prayers that you can pray with your little one. It is a lovely, small book that captures their attention and teaches them God's word. Wonderful for adults too!

Thank you Prayers: My Saviour
This book is great for young children now learning about praising Jesus and remembering to say Thank You for all the wonderful things given to them by God.It is a constant reminder that God is always here and he protectsand guides each of us, Jesus said " And be sure of this: I am with youalways, even to the end of the age." The illustrations are justwonderful they depict harmony among children regardless of colour or raceit also gives a little charater they can relate with. ... Read more

Book Description
The popular Life Application Bible Studies are now available in the New Living Translation. Each study provides an in-depth examination of a particular Bible book using the New Living Translation text and notes from the Life Application Study Bible. Charts, maps, and thirteen lessons, complete with questions and notes, are sure to challenge all who enjoy an application-oriented approach to Bible study. ... Read more

Book Description
Ideal for anyone looking for a daily devotional to learn more about Jesus and grow closer to him. These 365 daily readings present the life of Christ in chronological order with selections from the four Gospels. Also included for each day are a Life Application note to provide insight and encouragement, and an information note to provide interesting background and helpful explanations. Another great book in the convenient and popular One Year format! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Highly recommended
In over 20 years as a Christian, this is the best devotional I have ever read.It is thought provoking yet keeps the subject simple.Each day gives you something to ponder and the chronological order also puts adifferent approach on the gospels and Jesus' life.I would recommend it toanyone.In fact, I am buying several more as gifts for friends and family.

Great book to improve your walk with Christ
This is a great book for family devotionals. As a Christian it is all too easy to forget that others of whome have not yet given their lives to Christ don't really understand the 'Good News'. ONE YEAR with Jesus, is acompilation of the teachings and actions of Jesus. It is a concentratedform of the Gospel. It can effectively demonstrate to those that might beon the fence, the perfect love of Jesus, which is is the only thing that Ithink wins converts. ... Read more

Book Description
Freshly translated from the original German into todays English, this book contains a treasury of devotionals taken from Luthers writings and sermons (1513 to 1546), conveniently divided into daily readings to point readers to the Bible and a deeper understanding of faith. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

I love, 'Faith Alone'
By Faith Alone
A friend loaned me his copy and I took it home to read. My wife picked it up and started reading and said, I love it, it's just the way I feel. We both find the daily selections beautiful and the themes listed in the back refer us to just the perfect page for needed support. We ordered
another nine copies, five for our daughters and four for ourselves and friends. We continue to find joy and comfort in our daily reading.I am active in several men's bible studies and this book adds a complete new level to my understanding of God's word.

A Pleasure
My pilgrim pastor gave this to me as a gift and I really like it a lot. Testimonials by Martin Luther himself in an updated version of the German language, a branch of Olde English. Daily readings for every day, but the days were written by Luther day he wrote the book. Germans are very good speed readers, so the whole book can be read in a few weeks by literate people who are proud of their German heritage. The big thing of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, Martin Luther's surviving church revived by the pilgrims and Ku Klux Klan, is to get the person so their not such a geek. Baptist- we're going to beat you up so bad we're gonna make you look like an old man. The main thing at Luther's church is communion, while the rest of the service esp. the Nicean Creed is mocking the Catholics. We're friends with the Catholics now but they still hold some prejudice in this day and age of Pope Benedict, not really with Jean Paul II. It is a pleasurable experience in the Protestant branch to be baptized when you are of age. Lord will have mercy on the sinners who wish to defy god.

The best of the 55 volume writings of Luther
This is an excerpt of the 55 volume English translation of the writings of Luther.

People of all faiths will benefit from the focused, sharp insight of Luther.

A useable, convenient devotional that will last
I've spent years looking for a devotional that suits me.I knew I wanted one that would give me something to think about during the day but not take too long in the morning.I knew I wanted something that included everything right there on the page so I didn't have to juggle devotional, hymnal and Bible.I knew I wanted something that wasn't dumbed down, overly simple, ignored life's problems or made it sound like my personal relationship with Jesus was all that mattered.

I thought my standards were too high.They weren't.This is readable but intelligent; convenient but not too brief; and very faithful.You get a verse of scripture and then the rest of the page is a passage from one of Luther's works (lots of variety) that relates to it in some way.Most of them have to do with some piece of Christian living or practical theology.All very much stuff that relates to everyday life and applies to *me*, not just the perfect image of a Christian I have in my head.Great book.Also made to last.

A Long Awaited Devotional
With, Faith Alone: A Daily Devotional, the english world has a long awaited devotional in their hands. On these pages you will find Luther speaking for everyday, as he explains the Word, and applies the texts with his alwayspractical counsel and advice. In light of the fact that Luther did not write many commentaries this a rich resource to be daily nourished by what God taught Luther as he searched the Scriptures and found consolation on its pages for weary pilgrims. ... Read more

Book Description
The Questions Children Ask series has been a helpful teaching tool for hundreds of thousands of families. This eighth and latest book gives valuable answers to questions about friends, school, and situations related to popularity. The delightful cartoons, clever questions, and scriptural answers provide both a solid base and broad appeal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent poetry
This is now available in Resurrection Update : Collected Poems, 1975-1997; see the latter title for a review ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Ebony, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 752 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Diabetes.(SPECIAL SECTION)
Author: James R., III Galvin
Publication: Ebony (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 61Issue: 5Page: 157(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more