A triumphant story of a father and his little boy–and a love that knows no limits. Rob Coates is a survivor. He’d thought he’d won the lottery of life–a beautiful home, an incredible wife Anna, and their precious son Jack, who makes every day an extraordinary adventure. But when tragedy befalls his family, Rob becomes his own worst enemy, pushing away all he holds dear. With his world now … dear. With his world now suddenly just outside of his grasp, Rob turns to photography, capturing the beautiful skyscrapers and clifftops he used to visit–memories of the time when his family was happy. And just when it feels as though there’s nowhere left to turn, Rob embarks on the most unforgettable of journeys to reclaim the joy and love he thought he’d lost.
Deeply emotional, beautifully written, and filled with tremendous heart, We Own the Sky is a soaring debut about the strength of the human spirit and the boundlessness of love. It is a stunningly honest reminder of life’s greatest gifts, showing how even a broken heart can learn to beat again.
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An excellent story of grief and healing after losing a child, this book deals realistically with what parents often do when grasping at any hope offered. The novel is poignant without being sappy or like a Hallmark card. Recommended.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. WE OWN THE SKY by Luke Allnutt drives this point home through a medical drama about a couple, Rob and Anna, struggling with their five-year old son Jack’s brain tumor diagnosis and the difficult decisions they must make on his behalf.
To what lengths would you go to save your child if they were written off by traditional western medicine? This premise explores two options pursued by Rob and Anna: a risk-taking, grief-stricken father frantic to give his son a chance through a questionable, experimental therapy, and a by-the-book, conservative mother resigned to her son’s fate who is trying to provide the proper care for his final days.
WE OWN THE SKY shows how this kind of tragic predicament can tear a couple apart through guilt, blame, and clouded judgment due to grief. While the story is heartbreakingly sad, Allnutt does a good job developing characters, keeping the reader interested and cheering for both the father and mother to find their way through the sorrow.
Another interesting element of the story is whether you can believe the things you research and find online. As Rob and Anna scour the internet researching options, they are torn by information found in forums where other desperate parents seek advice and help to save their loved ones. Contradictory reviews and opinions of a doctor and his experimental treatment pit Rob and Anna against each other for their son’s care and threaten their marriage.
I really enjoyed this story and found it engaging, real, and touching. This story deals with the heavy issues of life, death and the tragic circumstances we cannot change. This story also provides hope by showing that life goes on and healing is possible by owning our mistakes, saying we are sorry, and offering forgiveness to those we love. I highly recommend WE OWN THE SKY for those who enjoy medical fiction and stories about family relationships.
Favorite Quotes:
Oh those Facebook mothers. The way they talked, as if they had invented motherhood, as if they had invented the womb, telling themselves they were different from their own mothers because they ate quinoa and had cornrows in their hair and ran a Pinterest board on craft ideas for the recalcitrant under-fives.
Her eyes are like lizard tongues, darting toward me when she thinks I’m not looking.
There was a strange musty smell in Anna’s parents’ house: it reminded me of Werther’s Butterscotch or the jasmine-scented handkerchiefs old people put in their drawers.
Too soon. He was seventy-four. He’d had his three score and ten. David Frost had probably spent more time on the toilet than my son had been alive.
I should have listened to my dad. He liked a drink, but hated drinkers. It’s all about them, son, he had told me, boring old bastards, always droning on. All them clever thoughts, son, but the boy could hardly stand. Because it gets you like that, the booze. It makes you think you’re unwrapping the world. But you’re not. The world is unwrapping you.
My Review:
This book gutted me, but in the best way possible. Cleverly written with wit and observantly insightful detail that tapped all the senses, I was engaged and invested throughout this tragic yet uplifting and transformative journey. I was staggered by the knowledge that this stunningly crafted work was Mr. Allnutt’s debut. I was quite taken by his well-honed and smooth writing style, which pulled me right into the vortex of a loving and desperate father’s cranium. I felt and absorbed his jubilance as well as his disequilibrium and misery. The premise was relevant and moving while the prose was heart squeezing and emotive. I fell in love with the adorable little Jack.