A supermarket clerk in a small dusty town, 22-year-old Libby is full of dreams but lacks the means to pursue them. When her younger sister Tess becomes pregnant, Libby convinces her not to have an abortion by promising to raise the child herself. When Tess takes off after the baby is born, Libby finds that her new role only increases the challenges she faces. Her already haphazard life becomes ever more fragmented. The baby's father, a Christian rodeo rider, suddenly demands custody, Libby loses her job, her boyfriend abandons her, and her own mother harps on how stupid she was to make that promise to Tess. More than a story of a single mother overcoming obstacles, Sky Bridge, with its painfully honest observations and complexity, leaves readers with a fresh feeling for what it means to inhabit a world in which dreams die, and are sometimes reborn.

"'How do we people go around in regular life, anyway, when the truth is that we're wondering about love, and death, and things that are on the verge of smashing us to pieces?' Libby, the 22-year-old narrator of Pritchett's compassionate, finely observed first novel, finds herself asking the big questions sooner than she might have expected when her beloved younger sister, Tess, quits their one-horse Colorado town, leaving Libby to care for her newborn daughter. Tess had wanted an abortion, but Libby, a grocery store clerk, said she'd care for the baby; little did she expect that Tess would vanish the minute she got discharged from the hospital. Thoughtful, serious Libby muddles her way through mothering darling, colicky Amber, getting no-nonsense advice from her prickly ranch-hand mother, warm counsel from ranch owner Baxter and fumbling, halfhearted attempts at support from the boyfriend she isn't sure she really loves. The novel's graceful, leisurely pace and genial characters overlay darker, tenser narrative threads, which include Tess's involvement in smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants. Pritchett, who proved herself an astute observer of rural Colorado's hardy inhabitants in her award-winning story collection, Hell's Bottom, Colorado, offers an amiable, moving story of love, duty and family." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Everything changes for 22 year-old Libby when her younger sister becomes pregnant and--in order to prevent her sister from having an abortion--she offers to adopt and raise the baby herself.