Twenty-two years passed between the publication of A Day No Pigs Would Die and its sequel, A Part of the Sky. The two stories, however, are chronologically separated by only two weeks. Following the demise of his hard-working father, Rob Peck at age thirteen is abruptly thrust into premature adulthood by the massive responsibilities that now surround him. He must tend to his family's farm that his father worked himself to death to keep, and he must do so while taking care of his mother and aunt and straining to stave off foreclosure by the town's only bank. Almost from dawn to the setting of darkness Rob's life is work, and at the same time that he is laboring so endlessly, he is attempting to go to school often enough that he won't have to become a dropout. Through triumphs and even into failure, Rob meets the daunting challenges of his new life head-on, refusing to back down from the honest toil that is his father's legacy. Even when he is about to lose everything that his father worked for, Rob retains the strong spirit that always buoys him as it did his father. He has family and friends and even a new girl, Becky Lee Tate, and despite his deep losses Rob knows that he will be all right as long as he remembers the blessings that still mark his new life. Robert Newton Peck is a good writer whose thoughtfulness blends well with the quiet intensity of Shaker life. A Part of the Sky is a good, sincere follow-up to a classic novel.
