[1] The book follows Josh Arnold, a young man whose family relocates from Mobile, Alabama to Corazon Sagrado, New Mexico during World War II.
The title of the novel comes from a line in an ancient mariner's rhyme "Red sky at morning, sailor take warning".
The opening of Chapter 13 reads, "A ratty blue bus makes a daily circle of the little mountain towns in Cabezon County, from Sagrado to the valley at Yunque, and then up through the hills -- San Esteban, San Maria, Villa Galicia, Ojo Amargo, Rio Venado, Rio Conejo, Amorcita and, at the end of the route, nearly 11,000 feet high, La Cima."
They wrote that it "succeeds very well in being what its author intended it to be: very entertaining, very readable, very funny.
[2] Harper Lee said “Red Sky at Morning is a minor marvel: it is a novel of paradox, of identity, of an overwhelming YES to life that embraces with wonder what we are pleased to call the human condition.