Young Adult Book Review: All the Earth,Thrown to the Sky by Joe R. Lansdale

By Cheryl Newsome | Arts, Literature and Sports Department | Central Library

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (and you shouldn’t—but I confess I’ve done it more than once). My advice is, don’t pass up a book because it is written with a younger audience in mind. There are a lot of good young adult books out there worth reading—books with interesting characters and attention-grabbing storylines. All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky by Joe Lansdale is definitely one of those books.

What would you do if you lived in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression and you suddenly lost both parents? The farm is about to be repossessed by the bank and there’s little to eat as the crops have been beaten down by dust storms? Jack Catcher decides it’s time to move on. Where, he isn’t sure, but he can’t stay in Oklahoma anymore. He joins up with his neighbors, Jane Lewis and her younger brother Tony, and they "borrow" a deceased neighbor’s old car and take to the road. It’s not a dull trip. To quote Jack (somewhere in the middle of the journey) “…We were sort of like bad luck charms. Wherever we went, a dead body was bound to show up before too long, and it was bound to be left unburied or unreported. It was a knack.” And no, they weren’t killing anyone. You’ll have to read the book to find out who did!

There were encounters along the way with gangsters (one who was very well-known) and a short visit in a hobo village where they learned the best way to hop trains (which they did). There was a quest to find a bank robber before his angry cohorts could track him down and kill him. There was even a kidnapping of sorts where they were forced to work on a farm for a very unscrupulous town official. There, they teamed up with another duped hostage, a young Black man named Gasper, to escape. I won’t say what happened, but there was a swamp and an alligator involved. You’ll have to read the book.

My one regret about this book is that it wasn’t longer. I would like to know what happened in all of the characters’ futures. The author made me like them. I hated to leave them so soon. I think you might enjoy travelling with them too.