
Fall Back Down When I Die
Joe Wilkins(Author)
Little, Brown & Company (Publisher)
Published on 11. April 2019
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-316-47535-8 (ISBN)
Description
Wendell Newman, a young ranch hand in Montana, has recently lost his mother, leaving him an orphan, as his father met a violent end more than a decade earlier. 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.
Into this situation comes seven-year-old Rowdy Burns, the illegitimate son of Wendell's cousin, who is incarcerated after falling prey to addiction. Traumatized, Rowdy is mute and damaged. Caring for him will be a test of Wendell's will and resolve, and yet he comes to love the boy more than he ever thought possible. That love will be stretched to the breaking point during the first legal wolf hunt in Montana in more than thirty years, when a murder results in a manhunt, and Wendell finds himself on the wrong side of a disaffected fringe group, hoping both to protect Rowdy and to avoid the same violent fate that claimed his father.
This dark and haunting debut novel is an unforgettable tale of sacrificial love, with two characters who win the reader's heart from the first page to the last.
Into this situation comes seven-year-old Rowdy Burns, the illegitimate son of Wendell's cousin, who is incarcerated after falling prey to addiction. Traumatized, Rowdy is mute and damaged. Caring for him will be a test of Wendell's will and resolve, and yet he comes to love the boy more than he ever thought possible. That love will be stretched to the breaking point during the first legal wolf hunt in Montana in more than thirty years, when a murder results in a manhunt, and Wendell finds himself on the wrong side of a disaffected fringe group, hoping both to protect Rowdy and to avoid the same violent fate that claimed his father.
This dark and haunting debut novel is an unforgettable tale of sacrificial love, with two characters who win the reader's heart from the first page to the last.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
440 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-316-47535-8 (9780316475358)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Joe Wilkins
Fall Back Down When I Die
E-Book
03/2019
Little, Brown and Company
€8.49
Available for download
Person
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.