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Blue Skies Falling

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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 emotionally with Sam. The ability to be emotionally intimate with one another is certainly a part of why these two fell in love. Kit Knight once told me that it was Arthur Knight's consistent positive talk about Glee-- his never saying anything negative about her--that made her admire and trust him.
Further, the dazzling images of nature function almost as a third main character. There are lovely phrases such as "the pale sherry sunlight" (96); "dried golden leaves swirling" (54); "in the moonglow, the stars whispering across the sky" (50); "lights from the city were diffused through tulle fog" (38) and so much more: the makings of poetry.

The grace of the human spirit is revealed in both Sam and Kathleen. They work through their pain together and go on to enjoy a real love and new joy. He expresses his pain early on: "'I don't know what I want. I just try to get through a day at a time since my wife died'" (40). While she is still working through her physical and emotional pain from a near-death accident, it is her military husband's homecoming which shatters her at present: "'Clark will be back in less than two months, a week before Christmas. It's supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life, but I'm absolutely terrified'" (37). Together, these two once-broken people make a happy start: "They made love in their room at the Peppermill and drank a bottle of champagne, so the hard edges of things blurred.... Everything seemed possible. It was going to be a fine Christmas" (206-07). This is the beginning of the freedom they have found to love again. In fact, they visit a bar called the "Liberty Belle" (207). While nothing is one smooth ride, these two have constructed the framework of something that will last.

Knight's sound research is made evident in the fabric of the background. For instance, his knowledge of the film industry (both Kit and Arthur Knight have been film critics and have had columns in various papers and at diverse times) comes up when he thinks of visiting San Juan Bautista with Sara: "Alfred Hitchcock had filmed Vertigo there, although the bell tower in the movie didn't exist. That didn't matter, because it existed in the minds of thousands of people who'd seen the film. Sometimes an artist had to lie to tell the truth" (158). There are frequently such interwoven and interesting bits of knowledge throughout the trilogy.

Part III
Final Cut (2010) finds Sam Bonner with two divorces behind him, having coped with his third wife's death, and now embarking on his fourth marriage to Kathleen.
With attention to detail in characterization, Knight's Kathleen is just like his actual fourth wife, Kit, in that she is the survivor of a traumatic car accident (she was a pedestrian), survived a lengthy coma, and endured a long-term recovery (learning to walk and talk again). Kathleen keeps a diary of her pregnancy and sees signs around them despite the risks to herself from all she has gone through from the car accident: "There was a rainbow overhead as they crossed the state line into Nevada. Kathleen said, `It's a good omen,' as Sam drove into the yellow and green light of a late-August afternoon. He'd never believed in omens but, this time, he thought she must be right" (31). Throughout the trilogy Sam is always hoping to believe in God or something. He struggles with this. Maybe what he believes in is Kathleen. Maybe that is all the faith he needs.

Final Cut, primarily, focuses on the journey Sam and Kathleen Bonner embark on together, culminating in the birth of a daughter they name, appropriately, for his beloved, deceased third wife, Sara. The new life they bring into the world seems to be the perfect result of the tenderness between them. The events that get Sam and Kathleen to this point are fully depicted as they are told from both of their viewpoints. Sam's experiences are told from his sensitive, yet masculine perspective, while Kathleen's are based on a journal Kit Knight had kept during her pregnancy.

The emotional journeys of each of the main characters are revealed in all of their complexities. As she is awaiting the surgery that will result in a new member of their family, Kathleen writes: "The operation itself doesn't bother me. It's the after effects, learning to walk again, I remember, the pain that takes your breath away.... I tell the nurses I don't care what sex the baby is, that I just want it to have character, but I really want a girl" (127-28). Sam's waiting indicates how he is feeling: At 8:02 "He went to the water fountain for a drink he didn't really want" (129), showing what he is doing with his nervous energy in a play-by-play. At 8:08 "He was sweating under his arms, but his hands were cold. Then the sweat on his fingers dried, and he sweat some more" (129), revealing even more nervousness. Two nurses tell him what he knew before seeing his daughter: "'She's beautiful'" (129). They decide on the name of Sara at the end of the novel, the three of them together for the first time in the hospital room. By doing so they honor Sam's third wife as well as their own union and the future. Maybe a fourth novel about raising Sara Bonner will be forthcoming.

Natural beauty plays out like movie settings as if a camera were rolling: "The air was as crisp as cellophane in the shimmering light of noon, and huge clouds moved across the sky like waves" (48); "the moon was the color of milk and the mountains seemed edged with phosphorus" (32); "they saw four doe leap across the road in front of them, as if they were swimming in air--they were that graceful--then they disappeared in the sagebrush" (30), each image connecting to something going on within the characters' minds or circumstances. This small catalog of images is a sampling of the beautiful images one will discover in this novel. Knight's prose is always poetic, economic, and lively. It plays like a film, image spilling into image.

The beauty of the human spirit comes through in this relationship. If Sam had grown close to Sara in the first novel--and he was--he is even closer to Kathleen. Yet, each person retains individuality. The women he is drawn to may be fragile physically, but they are powerful in mind, self-assertion, and inner-strength. Like Sara, Kathleen has her own way of coping with her experiences and a sense of humor to help out; after looking at the maternity clothes of her time (they are much more fashionable these days), she describes them as "generally garish and ill fitting" and made with "puffy sleeves and lace," an experience she sums up as "No wonder pregnant women look like fat angels" (31), revealing something bright and fun about the way she thinks. When the couple decides to settle in Nevada, "Sam had never felt so in touch with a place" and feels as if it is telling them "Welcome home, welcome home" (32). It is his quelled spirit, the scenery, and his lack of loneliness--he has Kathleen and that makes him feel settled in his soul and being. While Nevada came about in recent history for the Knights--Pennsylvania is where they had actually begun their long journey together, it seems to be the perfect place for the Bonners to feel at home. It is as fresh and new as this part of their lives.

Knight's research capabilities are equally potent in this novel as in the first and second novels although the research is unique. Here it stems from the rage Bloody Sam was famous for expressing on the set, the temper quelled only by drinking, yet it is emotional insight--perhaps part Peckinpah and part Knight--the comment that pulls the raging and tender sides together, herein making the two sides merge into one character whereas early on the character seemed bifurcated at times: "He believed in the feeling of beatitude you got when you were rid of rage and in the grace that came from making love, although he'd raged until his fifties, until he'd met Sara. When she was gone, he thought he might rage again, but he was too tired, beyond rage, then he met Kathleen" (49), which makes Sam Bonner finally come into his full adult self--someone who is not split in two between rage and tenderness. With his fury in the past, Sam Bonner is a whole and new man, no matter his age. While Sam Peckinpah died at only 59, and Sam Bonner is about 52 at this point, Knight has exceeded this. Sometimes healing can only come with time and with true and meaningful love. The earlier novels show a mad director who cheats on his wives and never feels emotionally satisfied. With Sara, and later with Kathleen, Sam Bonner has become his best possible self. Sam Bonner no longer exhibits any villainy whatsoever. Sam Bonner is, finally, a happy man.