T.C. BOYLE - BLUE SKIES

From the author of beloved novels like World’s End, East Is East, The Road to Wellville, and Drop City, comes a family tale utterly in sync with the absurdity of modern life. The family at the center of BLUE SKIES wants—as so many of us—to do right, get by, in the face of a looming ecological calamity. But, like Job, they are tested over and over by the gods—along with a Burmese python named Willie 2. Scorching temperatures, bee swarms, coastal erosion, invasive species, bug-borne pathogens, low pressure systems, and high pressure stress compete for one’s sanity. No amount of cricket flour cookies and chaparral removal can keep the atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones at bay. As Boyle sets in motion the chain of increasingly dire events that ensnare the enviro-sensitive parents, Ottilie and Frank, their carefree daughter Cat, and her embittered brother Cooper (who loses his arm to a tick bite), BLUE SKIES provides a cathartic—and ultimately moving—study of the human condition caught between fire and rain. T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. He has published eighteen novels, including World’s End and The Tortilla Curtain, and twelve collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara.