Set over three months, October, November, and December, Atlas Falls to Earth is a literary novel about a small, diffident boy named Atlas, who after his thirteenth birthday believes he has grown a set of gossamer wings. The only problem is the wings do not work. Fearful of his father Jason, a disgruntled blue-collar worker, and apprehensive of Jason's good-natured girlfriend Alex, Atlas spends his afternoons in the woods around his home, desperately trying to fly, so he may escape his lonely and oftentimes troubling life in Eastern North Carolina. At the same time he begins reading a book entitled Misadventures in Being, a strange fable about two woodland creatures named Bunny and Munk and a story, which gradually begins to parallel Atlas's life. Throughout the larger narrative, Atlas befriends a host of unique characters: Leonard, the eccentric school librarian; Verla, the pragmatic school nurse; and Santa Claus, an escaped convict, whose harrowing advice underscores Atlas's final attempt to use his wings. Atlas Falls to Earth is a Southern gothic tragedy examining what it means to be a boy too old to Trick-or-Treat or believe in Santa Claus but too young to fully comprehend the existential angst of adulthood.
Set over three months, October, November, and December, Atlas Falls to Earth is a literary novel about a small, diffident boy named Atlas, who after his thirteenth birthday believes he has grown a set of gossamer wings. The only problem is the wings do not work. Fearful of his father Jason, a disgruntled blue-collar worker, and apprehensive of Jason's good-natured girlfriend Alex, Atlas spends his afternoons in the woods around his home, desperately trying to fly, so he may escape his lonely and oftentimes troubling life in Eastern North Carolina. At the same time he begins reading a book entitled Misadventures in Being, a strange fable about two woodland creatures named Bunny and Munk and a story, which gradually begins to parallel Atlas's life. Throughout the larger narrative, Atlas befriends a host of unique characters: Leonard, the eccentric school librarian; Verla, the pragmatic school nurse; and Santa Claus, an escaped convict, whose harrowing advice underscores Atlas's final attempt to use his wings. Atlas Falls to Earth is a Southern gothic tragedy examining what it means to be a boy too old to Trick-or-Treat or believe in Santa Claus but too young to fully comprehend the existential angst of adulthood.
The boy, diminutively framed for his age, knelt on the uneven wooden floor of Jason’s farmhouse. He wore one of his Daddy’s old t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants, both of which were covered in dried paint, and his hair, long and matted, fell in thick strands just over his brow. Nervously, he twitched his fingers. “Go on and pick it up,” Jason said between small sips of black coffee, his hands mottled with wood stain and paint. Briefly, Jason thought back to the time when he was the boy’s age and how he had already shot and skinned a few rabbits and eaten a couple of squirrels he had cooked in a campfire built by him and his cousins. Or this is what his memory told him. Now, he looked down at his boy. How did his boy end up so- his mind stopped. With this thought came an uneasy pang of failure and disgust. He quickly winced himself away from the past. The boy kept his attention fixated on the small hunting knife ensconced in crumbled newspaper. He felt a sense of guilt as he thought about the walnut acoustic guitar with maple neck he had seen resting in a pawnshop window a week prior in town. Daddy said it was impractical, and besides, he could not afford it. The boy closed his eyes, and imagining it was the guitar, he slowly took the knife with its antler handle into his hands. A wild and strange melody came to him beneath the weight and feel of the knife. The notes flowed up and down as if they were the fluttering wings of a newborn bird, desperately attempting to catch flight. Squinting his eyes tighter, he held onto the tail of the melody, anxious to hear how it would end. “Happy Birthday, Atlas,” said Jason brusquely. The boy opened his eyes and looked up at his Daddy. Jason could barely form a smile, so he opted to take the last sip of his coffee instead.
Jason casually held the steering wheel of his pickup truck with two fingers as it meandered down a solemn country road. The interior of the truck showed signs of age and disrepair, adorned in twenty years of dust, discarded fast food cartons, styrofoam coffee cups, and latticed duct tape shielding cracked upholstery. The light syrupy sway of an old country song played softly from the radio, lulling Atlas into a light slumber. A cloudy sky and shriveled tawny leaves casually drifted into blackness. But no sooner had he closed his eyes when two loud, successive buzzes interrupted the country song. A prolonged buzz followed and then an automated voice. “The following message is being transmitted at the request of the Governor of North Carolina and the North Carolina state police. An inmate escape has occurred at the Gum Neck State Penitentiary in Tyrrell County, ten miles west of the Alligator River. At 3:30am this morning an accidental fire broke out at the Gum Neck State Penitentiary in Tyrrell County. Airlie Temple, age 79 and standing at 6 '4 and weighing 300lbs escaped the facility and is believed to be heading westward. All residents in Tyrrell, Chowan, Washington, and Bertie Counties should monitor local and radio news announcements. Considered armed and dangerous, Airlie Temple is currently serving a life sentence without parole for the murder of-” Unaffected, Jason reached over and flipped the radio to another station. Atlas, however, cowered beneath the impenetrable fear of what he had just heard, unaware that the small hunting knife had slid along the truck seat and landed up against his leg as his Daddy maneuvered the truck along the bend of the road.
Standing in a clearing, an egret lifted its white head from a muddy pool of water and took flight just as the truck sped by. It towered over the sentinels of long-leaf pine and bald cypress, who readied their foliage for shedding in aiguillettes of red and gold. As the bird aimed higher into the sky, the fortress of trees balked against a large field of bloody clay, dismembered trunks and branches, and an assortment of bulldozers and asphalt pavers. And just as the bird touched the bottom hem of the clouds heavy in the sky, the field ended, and newly constructed houses stood clustered together forming the design of a suburban housing development. Finally, the egret reached the altitude where nothing could be seen of the wounded earth and the slow moving disarray yet to come.
Somber clouds consumed the afternoon sky, and an unusually cold breeze shook the leaves on a grove of oaks and cottonwoods. A light mist dampened the ground. Jason and the boy sat in the bed of the pickup truck. Atlas fidgeted with a pebble while his Daddy prepped two banana and mayonnaise sandwiches. The boy studied the shape and color of the pebble before he tossed it. Hitting a tree, the pebble startled a skittish creature that rustled deep in the woods. Jason gave his son a disapproving stare, and then refocused his attention on the sandwiches. They had traipsed through grassy fields for the past two hours, and Jason was ready to call it a day. “You mad?” asked Atlas. “Naw,” said Jason as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand and handed Atlas his sandwich. “Reckon, we ain’t doin’ nothin’ but gun hikin’.” Atlas took a healthy bite of his sandwich. Removing a glob of bread and banana from the roof of his mouth with his finger, Atlas cleared his throat. “Maybe if we got a dog.” Jason grinned. “Shit, boy. You really aimin’ for a damn dog, ain’t you?” Atlas smiled. “I’ll think ‘bout it,” Jason said, polishing off his sandwich with a final bite. Atlas studied the palm of his right hand, and with his left index finger, he traced one of the palm’s deep grooves. He wondered if he was the only thirteen year old boy with such small hands. “Damn. Look there,” Jason whispered. In the distance, just beyond where the grove of trees emptied into a cottonfield, a bobwhite quail trotted along the edge with a hobbled gait. The rotund bird shook the dampness from its feathers and rested. Atlas could see the bird was injured, but before he could say anything, Jason had his shotgun pointed at the bird. The gun gave a loud crack, and then- “Damnit!” Atlas shoved his hands into his coat pockets and looked at his Daddy; the man gazed into the ineffability of his miss. Jason leaped from the bed of the truck and trounced through the wet brush toward the bird. Atlas followed. A minute passed, and Atlas anxiously awaited the moment when his Daddy would give up his hunt for the day. But just as Jason let out a long, extended sigh, Atlas caught the sight of blood speckled across one of the white cotton bolls. Close to his feet lay the injured quail, heavily breathing with its left eye wide and full of terror. “Is it-?” he asked. “No,” his Daddy replied. The boy watched as Jason grabbed the quail by its neck and wrung the life out of it.
Sitting against the worn pillar of the back porch, Alex rested her tired head and turned her gaze out beyond the backyard into the dense wilderness, which had already fallen into shadows beneath the heavy weight of night. She listened intently for the rumble of Jason’s truck but for the first five minutes, she only caught the stray barks of some aggravated dog. Her dark face, still traced with youthful beauty, appeared as a discarded bouquet of wildflowers, nestled within the forlorn frame of the farmhouse, and as she quieted her mind to the stillness that precedes a coming storm, Alex thought of her mother and how her skin always felt warm to the touch. Then through the shrouds of blackness, which cloaked the pines, emanated the glow of headlights, and finally she could hear the truck’s heavy breath panting through the long entrails of the driveway. Alex relieved herself from the support of the farmhouse and saw the boy’s face, forlorn with sunken eyes behind the dirty windshield. Then she saw Jason and knew. Jason exited the truck and grabbed his shotgun and the dead quail from the back of the truck. He tossed the bird onto the ground. Atlas slowly opened the truck door and slid from the seat onto the ground. “How was it?” asked Alex out of politeness. Silence. Atlas’s face remained downward. “It went that well, huh?” she remarked while Jason set a plastic bucket next to an old stump. He stopped as if he were about to say something but all he could manage was another long-winded sigh. Then he placed the dead quail onto the stump. “Go get your knife,” commanded Jason. Atlas did not move. “Atlas.” The boy turned and headed back toward the truck reluctantly. “Not a bad lookin’ bird. Did you shoot it? Or did-” Alex looked at Jason, who simply gave her an expression of irritation. Opening the passenger door of the truck, Atlas spied the small hunting knife on the seat. He thought about what his Daddy would be asking him to do. Instantly, he caught a mental image of the quail’s eye full of fear looking at him, and instead of grabbing the knife, he pushed it deep into the break between the seat back and bottom. Then he shut the truck door. Atlas ran over to Alex and his Daddy. “I can’t find it. I must’ve dropped it in the woods,” he said, punctuating his words with fake heavy breaths of disbelief. Jason stood upright and leered at his son. “Go inside and get me a pair of kitchen shears.” Atlas began to turn. “Not you. Alex.” He continued to stare at his son. Alex moved away from them toward the back porch. “That knife belonged to your granddaddy,” Jason said plaintively. “And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”
Next to a roasted sweet potato and a mound of chopped collards sat three pieces of quail meat, battered and fried, still sizzling with bursting pockets of hot oil. Atlas ate around the quail but kept all of his attention on it as if at any second the dismembered morsels might chirp in agony. “I can fix you something else,” Alex said, watching as the boy crammed the remaining bit of sweet potato in his mouth. Jason answered by grabbing Atlas’s plate and placing it on the opposite side of the kitchen table. Atlas glanced at Jason, who casually sopped up the grease and pot liquor on his plate with a small piece of white bread and tossed it in his mouth. Whatever misgivings he had about the deceased quail evaporated with the self-loathing he now experienced, the knowledge he had disappointed his father. When he looked to Alex for assistance, she had gone to the sink and begun washing the dishes. Atlas looked at the grains of salt and specks of collards and sweet potato that littered the kitchen table. Soon they would be wiped away with a few sweeps of a dampened washcloth. Once more, he turned to Jason, who now worked a toothpick into the tight spaces between his teeth and cast his iron stare into the dense region of his thoughts. This was the time of night when loneliness entered the farmhouse, and the unimaginable nightmares of his own creation lay waiting for Atlas in his bedroom. He exited the kitchen and lumbered up the wooden staircase, committing himself to the grim confrontation of solitude.
Atlas entered the coldness of his room with trepidation and then quickly threw on the lights. He had undressed and put on his pajamas before he saw the brown package tied with periwinkle ribbon centered on the quilt that covered his bed. Before he opened the package, he could tell it was a book, and he read the tiny card attached: To Atlas From Alex. Happy Birthday. Atlas ripped the brown paper slowly, revealing a maroon bound text in gold trim. On the cover was a pencil sketch of two malformed creatures dancing in the woods and written in gold, shiny calligraphy was the title: Misadventures in Being: The Strange Tale of Bunny and Munk. After climbing into bed Atlas shimmied under the quilt and opened the book.
Chapter One
Munk was not a boy, although he very much wanted to be one. He had been born with an insatiable itch to know what it would be like to be a boy, and as much as Miss Beulah warned him about the OOmans and their terrible ways, Munk could never quell this hidden curiosity to know what it meant to be something other than an animal. This was the risk of having half of a child’s heart sewn beneath his furry chest, and although his brother Bunny, who shared the other half, never had this desire to know, Munk could not quit his imagination and what he envisioned to be an extraordinary existence amongst the OOmans who lived just beyond the forest.
“Dey is a great chasm between knowin ‘bout duh OOmans and bein one,” Miss Beulah would warn, attempting to steer her son’s curiosity elsewhere. But it was no use. This was Munk’s deepest and darkest desire, and whenever he was alone in his thinking room, a teeny space the size of a treasure chest, which sat along the upper bough of the oak tree, Munk would cradle this secret like a precious gem and his half-heart would ache and long to be whole, long to be an OOman. All matters of his existence burned in those troubling ruminations, and thinking back on his birth, he could never quite figure out why he had not been given the chance to be a boy.
On that late, autumn night with a warm fire keeping the dankness out of the cellar deep beneath the roots of the massive oak tree, where Miss Beulah lived, the piquant aroma of tea tree oil stung Munk’s nose, and he was yanked from the clarity of pre existence and delivered into the stark contrast of a hazy reality. He could now smell, if he knew what smell might be for he did not quite know the sensation before then. But could he hear or see? Then like the magician who pulls handkerchiefs, one knotted to the other, out of his seemingly bottomless pocket, Munk’s ears cleared, and the most mellifluous voice careened through the dimly lit space like the sweet cadence of a dove. “Come intuh’ duh world, little ones.” Ones? More than one? Munk heard a high pitched giggle next to him. Something shuffled across the floor, and Munk could hear a fire crackling in the distance. Then the most dreadful pain singed the brow of his face, but before he could scream in agony, an opaque green light filled the void and the pain abated. The green bleariness cleared and through his now eyes, Munk could see a crumpled rag with glassy marbles shielded in spectacles staring down at him. Frightened, Munk wanted to jump from where he lay, but before he could move, the rag transformed into a face, a shiny piece of coal, sleek and smooth around the edges. The coal face placed a damp cloth against his forehead, and the coolness eased his nerves. Strange black spirits danced on the ceiling, and hoping they could tell him what was happening, he tried to speak, but no words came out, only little, broken gasps. “Yuh settle down now. Theah be time for dat later,” the coal said. It smiled, and Munk could see opals with bronzed tops peering down at him. The coal was not coal at all but a real thing, perhaps like him. But he was in his head then, and he clung onto what he thought he knew to be true. Why could he not get back to what he was before and who was he now? Nothing made any sense; it was all too heavy and unsustainable for his new mind. Another playful squeal shot up beside him, and Munk turned his head again to witness the noise. Beside him, a white, hairy mass speckled with coarse, fawn splotches squirmed. The wiggly lay inside a large wicker basket, and upon closer inspection, Munk realized the basket ensconced them both. The coal face, who now stood as more than just a piece of coal but an old creature with a hundred gray roots growing out of its head, held a pewter chalice over the wiggly and spooned out molten sapphire, dabbing the liquid into the wiggly’s darken eye sockets. The squeal erupted again, this time in a frenetic surge, which terrified Munk even more. Then the coal face pulled out a tiny, leather pouch and with its elongated, chipped nails removed two small onyx stones and dropped them carefully into the pools of hardening sapphire. “Dat’s your bruhder, Bunny,” the coal said thoughtfully. “And I’s your mama, Miss Beulah.” In his first attempt to feel, Munk reached up with his claw and touched her skin. Munk wanted to be like the spirits dancing across the ceiling and walls instead of crammed inside the basket. Then with songlike intonation, he decided he would trust Miss Beulah, and he gave over to life and left his head completely. Joyous rapture came over him, and he too began giggling in syncopation with his Bunny, who still wiggled next to him. Miss Beulah gently cooed once more in his ear. “Munk, this be your name,” sang Miss Beulah, separating his coarse tangled hair into flowing, black reams. Munk felt her nails scratching his scalp; it felt wonderful. She then wiped away a little of the peridot running down Munk’s face, not because it had not hardened but because he was crying, and he did not know why. His Bunny, caught in the throes of happiness, burped, and a little spit shot from his throat and landed on Munk’s forehead. Bunny continued to hiccup rapidly between each broken laugh. Miss Beulah cleared the fluid from Munk’s forehead and removed a dusty jar from off one of the shelves. She removed a ragged, gummy sprig no bigger than a cricket’s leg and nestled it between Bunny’s lower lip and gums. “This be snaggleroot,” she whispered, and instantly, the Bunny’s rambunctious squeals morphed into snores as he drifted off to sleep.
So began Bunny’s penchant for the opiate root, which grew only in the fetid bogs of the swamp As Bunny grew to a six foot five oaf with flat feet, a pot belly, and a single tuft of blonde hair on his otherwise bald head, his cravings blossomed into a lifelong love affair with snaggleroot, which resulted in a perpetual idiotic grin across his cartoonish face. While sucking on the gummy sprig and letting its syrupy juice drip down his throat, Bunny enjoyed the simple life of chasing a tail he did not have and licking his palms and sticking them together just so he could take pleasure in seeing the black goo spread out in thin streams. A falling leaf would easily rouse him into frenzied play, and if the March winds were strong enough, Bunny would spread his arms and pretend to soar his way down to Wisteria Creek, which ran just below the hill from the oak tree. Although burly and intimating in stature, his doltish behavior precluded any sort of anger or brute force. Bunny lived merely to relish life. He had no need to know life or question it; he just wanted to be in it, and with only half a heart, it was hard to imagine how he had so much love for the forest, Miss Beulah, and his Munk.
Munk, on the other hand, took to life like Spanish moss takes to the Quercus Virgininia. What he lacked in height and physical prowess, he made up for in his precocity. He was considerably shorter and skinnier than Bunny, standing a mere four feet and weighing only sixty pounds (although once he tied his wrists to a tree limb and had Bunny pull his legs, so he might grow a few inches, but he only ended up breaking both his ankles, which Miss Beulah had to reset with cypress boughs). Munk’s thick black mane, which sprouted from his scalp like thistles, constantly reminded him of his animal form, so he kept it tucked beneath a tattered coral bonnet. Very early on Munk developed the remarkable ability to store copious amounts of thoughts in his rather diminutive brain, and while this somewhat pleased Miss Beulah, Munk’s overt inquisitiveness and rapacious appetite for learning also troubled her. He would spend hours observing Miss Beulah practicing her witchcraft, and even under Miss Beulah’s suggestion that he play in life rather than scrutinize it, Munk begged his mama for material, which would satiate his hunger for thinking. On his first year anniversary of entering the world in an attempt to show his erudition, Munk donned a pair of welding goggles he had termed his “visionary goggles,” paraded downstairs in a black tailcoat and soldier boots, imitating his best OOman’s gait, and recited his best interpretation of Hesiod’s Prometheus myth. Such blatant hardihood displeased Miss Beulah, but she could not contain her laughter when she saw the outlandish getup. Eventually, she conceded to her son’s wishes, and Miss Beulah taught Munk the basic syntax of formulating language through letters and symbols. He did not have to growl and whimper anymore to express his thoughts and ideas; he could now talk although not as eloquently as his mother.
Once Munk had been blessed with the precious gift of speech, he spent countless nights pouring over the ancient and classical tomes nestled on the bookshelves in Miss Beulah’s library. He loved the philosophical musings of Cicero and Plutarch, laughed like he had never laughed before as he romped through Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and grew increasingly frustrated over the Hebrew and Christian theologians, who claimed there was only one, vengeful god in the heavens. But he had a special affection for the plays of Shakespeare, specifically the comedies, and although Bunny had no understanding or need, for that matter, of such florid prose, Munk readily made him reenact Bottom’s transition from possessing a human head to that of an ass from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bunny snorted around the front porch of the oak tree, and the sight elated the impish Munk. Even after Miss Beulah rebuked him and told him to quit such foolishness, Munk would still slip into a silk peignoir and pretend to be the poisoned Titania, falling in love with the loutish Bottom. These colorful jests only flourished Munk’s thirst for knowledge, and once he had finished reading and rereading all of Miss Beulah’s scholarly texts in her thorough collection, his fiery interest in the tangible world of the OOmans escalated into an incurable itch-an itch to think as many thoughts as possible. Still, Munk was forced to spend his days as an animal, roaming the countryside with his Bunny. Their symbiotic pairing had become the perfect ingredient for Dionysian ecstasy. They behaved like ribbed sprites, tumbling through tree holes without worry and wallowing in creek mud just to see how dirty they could get. They traipsed about the swampland on each other’s back, imbibing nature as if it were some orgiastic potion used to heighten the senses and promote reckless hedonism. Overall, Bunny and Munk were the princes of the forest, and their lively adventures caused the sparrows to sing in the trees and the crickets to chirp at night. They had no need for time and only ended their day in the swamps when Miss Beulah’s cooking could be smelt, wafting through the pine trees, calling them back to the oak tree.
At home the duo would share in a glass of chicory whiskey, sing primordial ballads with Miss Beulah about the olden days, and then they would all sit around the fire and listen to Miss Beulah tell stories about the OOmans and their devious ways. They were a family, the tight knit musicians of a raucous juke joint, bawdy and forbidden, sitting on the outskirts of town, churning out rhythmic clapping, falsetto howls, and hair-raising yelps, which rang across the ripples of Wisteria Creek into the dark Carolina night.
But as much as Munk loved his life as an animal, at night when his itch was at its worst, he would sit in his thinking room at the highest point of the oak tree and mull over the one thing he intrinsically knew connected him to the OOmans. Miss Beulah always discounted what Munk felt in his heart to be true, and she did her best to dissuade the inquisitive Munk from thinking about it much further, lest he discover something he would rather not know. “Dig deep enough,” she would say, “and you’s a gonna find a mirror.” Then one summer night, while Miss Beulah slept, Bunny and Munk crept into the cellar for a late night snack. Normally, Bunny and Munk were not allowed in the cellar, but as they had gotten older and shown themselves to be more responsible, Miss Beulah had given them the duty of hauling up spices for her while she cooked. Since they had been down there before, the two brothers saw no problem in going into the cellar to munch on some squash pickles and butterbean jam. While Bunny rooted through a canister of dried turnip flakes, Munk snooped through the remote recesses of the cellar. Back behind barrels of blackberry wine, Munk stumbled upon a small, metal door, no taller than he. Confident Bunny was preoccupied with licking away the turnip flakes, which had gotten stuck to his underarms, Munk tugged and twisted at the iron doorknob till the door finally gave way and opened. Peering into the darkness behind the door, Munk could not see anything. He removed his visionary goggles and sniffed the musty air. The area behind the door seemed to be relatively small, maybe the size of a fireplace, and budging the door a little further, Munk slipped through the narrow cranny and slowly walked inside. He reached around the cold, stone walls with his claws and continued sniffing the air, but before he could go any farther, he ran into the opposite wall. Why would Miss Beulah need a room this small, he thought. Patting the wall with his claws, he felt around for anything, which might indicate to him the room’s purpose. Munk made it nearly to the floor when he discovered a heavy, metal ring attached to one of the stones. Immediately, he tried pulling the ring, but the wall would not budge. By this time, Munk could hear Bunny whining, scared that he may have been left alone in the cellar. “I’s back heah,” he yelled to Bunny without breaking a whisper. Bunny bounced his way to Munk, nearly knocking him over when he found him; the room behind the door was terribly cramped. “Bunny. Take dis and pull,” Munk instructed, grabbing Bunny’s hand and putting it on the ring.“Yank!” he ordered. With one mighty heave Bunny pulled the ring as hard as he could. The wall cracked, letting loose a horrendous din, which rang throughout the roots of the oak tree. Munk scurried to the front of the cellar and grabbed the lantern he had brought from upstairs. “Move yore butt, Bunny! Lemme see,” he said, shunting his brother aside. Thinking there might be snaggleroot hidden behind the wall, Bunny mounted Munk’s back to get a better look. Munk held the light forward. He could not believe his eyes. The ring was attached to a small, metal box no bigger than a desk drawer. An inscription had been chiseled across the front. My Little Prince, Requiescat in Pace. Munk’s Latin was fairly rudimentary, but he was able to discern that the words indicated the drawer was some sort of sleeping chamber. Oddly, the inside contained nothing more than a little pile of ashes, but as Munk brought the light closer, he revealed a moldy skull. Munk stared at the object dumbfounded, unable to unhinge a lump, which had developed in his throat. Bunny moaned and slithered off of Munk, completely disinterested because the fruits of their labor had yielded no snaggleroot. Munk, however, was absorbed in the skull. There was no indication of its owner inside the box, and apart from a few fissures and holes, the skull lay altogether intact. Trembling with excitement, Munk reached into the drawer and ran his stunted claws carefully across the skull’s surface. The exterior felt cool and hard, but within Munk, there developed a strange sense of fright about the artifact of death before him. What tremendous wonder and amazement? He had found an OOman skull, an elusive object! Sure, he had seen an OOman. After all Miss Beulah was one, but to be holding the remains of one caused the itch in his brain to seethe with excitement. For all their turmoil and strife, was this the inevitable end of all OOmans? “Who down heah?” called a voice from the top of the cellar stairs.“Quiet Bunny!” Munk whispered, blowing out the lantern and pulling shut the chamber door. In the dark Munk grabbed the skull and tucked it between his tailcoat and his bushy tail. The two brothers stood motionless, holding their breaths, so Miss Beulah could not detect them. “Wheah you rascals at?” she snapped. Munk could hear her work boots scrapping along the floor. “I know’s you down heah! And you done ate all my squash pickles? Bunny!” During the most inopportune times Bunny always got the giggles, and as Miss Beulah sifted through the mess angrily, Bunny could not control himself. First his nose twitched. Then his two front teeth, the size of Brazil nuts, protruded from his quivering lips in a mounting grin. Munk sensed Bunny shaking.“Don’t little Buddy! Don’t” implored Munk. And then like a tidal wave retreating from the shoreline before it lashed again in one indomitable crash, Bunny inhaled a might breath to keep from laughing, but his lips would not hold, and a guffaw the like of which is similar to a donkey’s bray, steamrolled from Bunny’s mouth and blew open the chamber door. Miss Beulah promptly grabbed the two marauders by their hair and dragged them upstairs to her study for punishment. Bunny was sentenced to a month without snaggleroot, although such a sanction had been enjoined before and was never upheld for more than a week. But Munk, on the other hand, received a stern rebuking, especially for allowing his brother to consume the provisions Miss Beulah had put up for the winter. Then Miss Beulah delivered her final punitive action, for fate twiddles with those who meddle where they should not, and Munk was no exception. Sitting Munk on her lap and wrapping him in some of her ropelike braids, Miss Beulah told him the truth: the heart he shared with Bunny had once belonged to her OOman son, who tragically died when he was only three years old. She never told Munk how the boy died, only that after he had died, she removed his heart. Then with a fox’s head, the paws of an otter, and the body of a squirrel, she constructed Munk. She constructed Bunny mostly from the remains of a boorish hare, but she shaved him bald and put his tail on his head. Their eyes she sculpted out of gems, but more than precious than gems, she divided the heart with a paring knife and gave each of them half, the final act, which brought her sons into the world. But then came her warning. “Half an OOman heart does not an OOman make; steppin’ too far into OOman temptation gonna be Bunny and Munk’s gravest mistake.”
The epigraph of Atlas Falls to Earth echoes the words of Thomas Wolfe and the heartbreaking realization that we enter life as strangers even to those who love us, forever locked inside the solitude of our own being. It's a bleak thought and one that is beautifully true. Writer Ashley Christopher Leach builds on this sentiment to bring about a creatively rich exploration of the human condition, shaped, in equal parts, by our loneliness as well as our desire to be seen. The epigraph, thus, becomes a quiet key to unlocking a story simmering in the ache of becoming and belonging.
The novel rides on the gentle shoulders of Atlas, a thirteen-year-old boy trying to understand who he is in a social atmosphere determined to hold him back from the brink of the said discovery. His father’s disappointment hangs over him like a permanent shadow, as does his disgust at Atlas’s imaginative, esoteric interests, while the boy's classmates mirror the same disdain, projecting their own insecurities onto him and finding it easier to mock their differences than confront their shared sense of emptiness.
Mired in these setbacks, Atlas’s 13th birthday marks a bewildering transformation: wings sprout from his back. Gossamer-like, otherworldly, and utterly unusable, his struggle to make them work becomes the book’s most potent metaphor, a physical manifestation of the identity he is desperate to claim but has not yet learned how to inhabit. The wings flutter over the fine line of promise and burden.
This journey is nudged further by Alex, his father’s partner, who gifts him a strange fable about Munk and Bunny, two woodland creatures partially humanized by a grief-stricken witch. Their magical, unsettling world comes to lie in parallel to Atlas’s own. Munk’s confusion, his longing for belonging, and his fear of transformation invoke every uncertainty Atlas faces. As Atlas reads, the fable bleeds into his reality, the two stories entwining in a way that feels more organic than gimmicky.
On a blueprint, such an obvious literary comparison can come across as overbearing and cliched, but Leach handles it with remarkable restraint and emotional clarity. These interwoven narratives deepen the novel’s thematic investigation into alienation, the dark contours of ignorance, and the suffocating pressure to shrink yourself to fit someone else’s mold instead of being allowed to carve your own.
What emerges is a story that understands that the path towards one's sense of identity isn't always a triumphant unveiling. More often than not, it is a slow, bruising negotiation with the world. In its most powerful moments, the novel suggests that finding this peace is not about escape but about learning how to exist honestly as you are even when others cannot bear to see you fly.
Atlas Falls to Earth is, thus, darkly tender, imaginative, and an essential read for anyone who has ever felt like a stranger in their own skin.