The Wind Blows in Sleeping Grass

September 11, 2023
Powner (Where the Blue Sky Begins) spins a sincere tale of childhood secrets and second chances in small-town Montana. Pete Ryman has settled into a quiet life as a garbage collector in Sleeping Grass, where he’d lived as a child, after an anger problem cost him a string of jobs and forced him to hop from town to town. Now, he spends his free time reciting Thoreau and Robert Frost and caring for his “sweet-tempered swine,” a 79-pound pig named Pearl. What he doesn’t know is that Wilma Jacobsen, the 82-year-old widow on his garbage collection route, harbors a secret about his childhood, which was spent bouncing between foster homes after his mother left when Pete was 11. One evening, Pete notices Wilma’s trash can hasn’t been set out and ventures into her house to find her on the floor after a fall. He helps her up, and after she invites him over for dinner to thank him, the two slowly begin to bond, though things get complicated when Pete falls for Wilma’s housekeeper, Lily. After Pete’s sister and nephew arrive in town, further jogging Wilma’s memories of the Ryman children’s volatile upbringing, she’s no longer able to contain her guilt about the past. Powner’s well-drawn characters will charm readers from page one, and the meditations on the power of faith, forgiveness, and hope form a strong emotional undercurrent that lends the narrative depth and momentum. This tender story and its unassuming hero enchant.

Starred review from September 1, 2023

In remote Montana, a trash collector with anger issues who likes poetry and converses mostly with his potbellied pig is an unlikely hero. But Powner (Where the Blue Sky Begins) has readers rooting for Pete the garbageman from page one. The small town of Sleeping Grass is on the Hi-Line, where the land and the people are being slowly eroded by the wind and the harsh winters. Pete grew up here, before the bottom fell out and he was shuttled through a series of foster homes; he is only back now because it was the one place willing to overlook his past mistakes and give him a living wage. He meets a cast of characters, including a debt-ridden octogenarian and a grieving Siksika man, who help heal the hurts of the past and teach him how to live, but his new friends have problems and secrets of their own. VERDICT Powner's real-life experience as a seasoned foster mother shines through in this tale of finding treasure in the people and things that others have cast aside. The secondary characters are funny, flawed, and so unusual that readers will be clamoring for more.

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