Succession Stories | Bonus | The Tilt of the World with Joe Wilkins, Author of "The Entire Sky"

In this companion episode to our "Succession" season, Megan sits down with author Joe Wilkins to explore the pressures facing rural communities and how fiction can help us understand them more deeply.

Joe's award-winning novel "The Entire Sky" follows a ranch family in eastern Montana navigating grief, generational change and the uncertain future of their land. Through these fictional characters, the novel offers a different way to think about succession and what happens when transition is delayed or avoided.

Like Megan, Joe also grew up in rural Montana and has since chosen a home elsewhere, but his work is still rooted in the eastern Montana landscape – his "primal place" – where he witnessed how land shapes people and families over time. Together, Megan and Joe also discuss the "tilt," or forces pressing down on agricultural communities today, and the push-and-pull between leaving and returning home.