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5.0 out of 5 stars
Knight Trilogy, September 29, 2010
This review is from: Blue Skies Falling (Hardcover)
Review of Blue Skies Falling, Blue Moon Rising, and Final Cut: A Trilogy by Arthur Winfield Knight
--by Maura Gage Cavell, Professor of English and Director of the Honors Program at Louisiana State University--Eunice
Blue Skies Falling, a novel by Arthur Winfield Knight, is now available through Forge, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 ([...]), $22.95, ISBN: 0-312-87779-X.
Blue Moon Rising, a novel by Arthur Winfield Knight, is now available through [...], ISBN: 978-0972703994.
Final Cut, a novel by Arthur Winfield Knight, is now available through Milverstead Publishing LLC, 31 Rampart Drive, Wayne, PA 19087, phone: (888) 667-3981 ([...]), ISBN: 9780984284764.
Blue Skies Falling, Blue Moon Rising, and Final Cut comprise Arthur Winfield Knight's trilogy of movie director Sam Bonner. With all of the trappings of the Hollywood lifestyle in his professional work and associated playtime, Sam Bonner is closely modeled on David Samuel Peckinpah who went by Sam Peckinpah, and who was nicknamed Bloody Sam based on the violence in his movies. The last name of Bonner in all likelihood comes from one of Peckinpah's famous films, Junior Bonner. The film names used in the novels will coincide in the readers' mind with the titles of the actual films Peckinpah directed. The names of the actors in Peckinpah's movies will be used as they were credited or known. Both Peckinpah and Knight were married several times, Peckinpah having three wives and five children and Knight having four marriages and one biological child with his fourth wife, Kit. Any outrageous or rebellious behavior stems from the Peckinpah side of Sam Bonner. The influence of the loners and wild West figures on Peckinpah are visited on Sam Bonner and Knight and come in the form of travel stories in Sam Bonner's realm of experiences with his third and fourth wives. However, it is Sam Bonner's personal life and the two most significant, intimate relationships of his life with his third and fourth wives that allow Sam Bonner to win a reader's heart. These two relationships are closely based on the women in Knight's life. This is, in fact, a highly autobiographical trilogy in this regard. Herein, one will discover colorful, complex characterization, complete events examined from two points of view, emotional journeys, gorgeous images of nature, the beauty of the human spirit, with sound research made evident in the fabric of the background.
Part I:
Blue Skies Falling (2001) occurs in 1976, the Bicentennial year, a celebration of our country's birth, and the journey of Sam and Sara Bonner as they each contend with the knowledge that she is indeed dying. (It is dedicated to Tiffany, Arthur and Kit Knight's only biological daughter, who would become another Sara as a newborn baby born to Sam and Kathleen in Final Cut.) The source for the Sara Bonner married to Sam is Glee Knight, Knight's third wife. While Glee was a brunette, Sara is described as a blonde California type. While Glee died of rheumatoid arthritis, Sara dies of leukemia.
Lively, dynamic portrayals of the two main characters' personalities become the driving force of the novel. The couple is traveling together, Sam doing the driving through Utah, which they agree is "etherizing" (45). As they'd crossed Kansas, Sara expressed how a friend with dental issues described her medicated ride across the state: "'she'd wake up every couple of hours, look out the window, and see more sunflowers and sagebrush. `No wonder Dorothy went to Oz,' she said. Now I know how she felt'" (45). Sam is always interested in the most colorful Western characters and even visits their graves: "There were no signs directing people to Holliday's grave, so Sam wandered around, reading tombstones at random, until he found Doc's. It was an elaborate memorial, made out of marble, but it was disappointing, even though it pictured five playing cards and two pistols above his name" (49). These passages illustrate the personalities of Sara and Sam and show to some degree how they see the world.
The inclusive episodes are considered from two vantage points, something which produces a full picture instead of the more common one-sided incident. When Sara asks Sam to take her on a Ferris wheel at a carnival they'd been walking around, she does so with child-like enthusiasm. She still sees life with hope even though she is dying. Sam had been thinking of his neglect of his own children while he'd been preoccupied with film-making. When they reach the top and the wheel stops turning, Sara wants to be held while Sam looks out "over the town. Over the prairie. Over the great world" (106). Their two perspectives on seemingly small moments and on larger episodes are equally treated to offer complete pictures.
Coping with one's own death is Sara's emotional struggle as coping with the impending sense of losing her is Sam's. While the couple takes a road-trip to escape the death they cannot elude, eventually they must come home to face it. In her journal Sara writes: "I try to think of the good times, but it's difficult. I try to will them back, lying in bed. I tell Sam, `I'm fine; I'm all right,' but I know he doesn't believe me. I was never a good liar'" (265). When she starts to talk about what he will do with her shoes when she's gone, Sam "felt as if he were carrying death around in his left pocket" (268). Neither one can escape the inevitable. It is their concurrent thoughts and views on the subject that make it complete.
Stunning natural images play out like intermittent flashes that ground the couple in places. These bursts of beauty function as symbols of what is going on at given moments. As Sara's impending death seems somewhat unreal and real simultaneously, the narrator describes the Rocky mountains: "The mountains almost seemed unreal, after crossing the desert, as if someone had painted them there as a backdrop for a motion picture in the late afternoon light" (45). Sara's body giving out is nothing like a movie to this couple, unfortunately. It isn't make-believe or fantasy. It is all too real.
The magnificence of the human spirit prevails despite each one's loss. As Sara is dying, Sam tries to ease both of their fears by talking to her of a journey they had wanted to make: "'We're riding into the high country. The two of us. Making that trip we've talked about for so long.... we're going to make it. We're going to be all right. We're on the far side of heaven.' He was crying now. He could no longer feel her breathing.... `then we evaporate into the empty air of existence'" (278). This is how Sam tries to comfort them both as Sara's life slips away.
With his thoroughgoing research made evident in the fabric of the background information, Knight makes his characters' lives seem quite real, yet the details shine like windows or mirrors, reflecting something about the characters and never coming off as intrusive. For example, it will be evident to even a casual reader that Knight knows intricately the lives of Zee and Jesse James and that of the man who killed Jesse, Bob Ford: "Ford was only four or five feet away, and Jesse was unarmed. It had happened on a Monday morning" (150). One will learn a bit of film history and wild West history when reading this novel.
Part II:
Blue Moon Rising (2009) focuses on Sam Bonner coping with third wife Sara's death and meeting and falling for Kathleen, who is still technically married by law--albeit not in her heart--to someone else; together they face her unsupportive family, leave this unhappy bunch behind, and act on what they must do--"follow their hearts," as Kathleen's real life counterpart, Kit, would say.
This novel is truly character-driven. For instance, one poignant scene shows the couple facing an unhappy mother, brother, and so-called husband, as well as the police. While everyone is manipulating Kathleen as best he or she can into staying unhappily married, the man whose love for her is real, unlike that of her husband Clark, who by all appearances believes he can own a person, makes the only sensible move: "When the woman at the police precinct asked what was wrong, Sam said, `My girlfriend's husband is trying to force her to leave my place, and she doesn't want to go'" (198). Sam refers to brother Jerry as a "gorilla" (200), had earlier offered him a banana, all revealing his sense of humor despite the fact that Kathleen's family is trying to kidnap a perfectly capable thinker of 26. The law, at least, was on Kathleen and Sam's side, even if the Jewell family with Clark in tow, will never support this couple because of their own limited perceptions of life. Jewell lends itself to a certain sense of irony, something apparently not lost on Knight.
The events in the novel are examined from two points of view, offering therein a complete vision of the significant incidents. A brief illustration occurs when married Kathleen still feels she has to go back to Clark after Kathleen and Sam had been enjoying a winter's walk: "Sam squeezed her hand. `I could get used to this'" and she matter-of-factly states, "'Don't'" (159). These comments show the reader how precarious their being together is at this point.
Emotional crossings occur on several occasions. In one Kathleen asks Sam to let her know something of Sara. He runs through several possibilities in his mind but settles on a starting point that he assesses to be more about himself than Sara: "He could begin with the time he'd given her some daffodils, because they were her favorite flower. Sara was thrilled when he handed her the bouquet" (141). He shares Sara with Kathleen and Kathleen shares her accident and all she endured physically and...
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