Crimson Skies of the Sangre de Cristo

When two young adults emerging from separate, devastating personal tragedies meet on a two-lane mountain highway in Colorado in 1982, their individual quests for peace become a shared journey to unexpected discovery about the burdens, boundaries, and bounties of love, faith, friendship, and family.

 With stunning Rocky Mountain geography as both context and motif, and rendered in extended chiastic structure (as found in Psalms, Isaiah, and the Mayan Popul Vuh), Crimson Skies of the Sangre de Cristo is a love story/road-novel reminiscent of the abrupt and unfortunate ‘Teresa’ chapter of Kerouac’s On the Road. But in contrast to OTR, Crimson Skies’ dual POV characters offer a satisfying balance, depth, and perspective never offered by that earlier work. The incorporation in this novel of much greater backstory, heightened jeopardy, musical thematics, multicultural contexts, and its propelling drama of intense spiritual pilgrimage greatly extend the purpose and intent of that archetype.