kpickens512 's review for:

Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford

5.0

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This coming of age story published in 1968 was adapted into a film with Richard Thomas in the lead role. The story is interesting to me because it is about a family that moves from Alabama to rural New Mexico when the father reports for a military duty. I recently moved to New Mexico so there was some parallels there with my own life. The mother of the family can’t adjust to the transition starts drinking way to much, leaving the teenage son to deal with the culture shock and his mother’s declining mental health. The main problem with the story is the racism complete with using the “N word” and the mother’s racism toward the Latino community including her hired help. It’s interesting study of how times have changed, and made for interesting comparison reading with Our Migrant Souls by Hector Tobar.