Thank you Booksparks, author James Grady, and Pegasus Books for the #src2025 #gifted book!
American Sky follows Luc, a small town Montana teen, through his high school and college years. In that brief time, Luc and the country witness sweeping changes across America. From the JFK assassination, to the moon landing, the Viet Nam War, to Kent State, to the Summer of Love.
Luc is a great main character. He’s kind of nerdy. He’s not an athlete, but rides the bench for the football team just to prove to himself and others that he’s tough enough. He’s smart, polite, and friendly. His life revolves around school, after school and summer jobs, his friends, and girls. He’s a kid trying to make sense of a quickly changing world and his place in it.
Grady’s storytelling is powerful and his writing really conveys the frantic feeling of teenage years. The chapters are short. The sentences are even shorter often jumping from an inner thought to spoken dialogue. It gives off big teen energy of trying to think of the right thing to say or do before just blurting something out or making the wrong move. The setting is small town America all the way. Everybody knows everyone’s business, things happen, and certain things never get talked about. And Luc is just trying to figure it all out.
Pick this one up for:
☮️ a sweeping coming of age story
☮️ a very well written and likable main character
☮️ the turbulent time period of the 1960s
☮️ a book that perfectly captures a unique moment in time in a country that’s facing uncertain ltimes, the horrors or war, changing social norms, and yet somehow still clings to optimism
☮️ a story about growing up and getting out
Do you read historical fiction? Do you have a particular time period that interests you?
#americansky #jamesgrady #hisoricalfiction #comingofagestory
#montana #literaryfiction
About the Author
James Grady’s first novel Six Days Of The Condor became the classic Robert Redford movie Three Days Of The Condor and the current Max Irons TV series Condor. Grady has received Italy’s Raymond Chandler Award, France’s Grand Prix Du Roman Noir,Japan’s Baka-Misu literature award, two Regardie's magazine short story awards, and been a Mystery Writers of America Edgar finalist. He's published more than a dozen novels and three times that many short stories, been a muckraker journalist, and a scriptwriter for film and television. In 2008, London’s Daily Telegraph named Grady as one of the “50 crime writers to read before you die.” In 2015, The Washington Post compared his prose to George Orwell and Bob Dylan.
