The Sun Walks Down
'Steinbeckian majesty' - Sunday Times
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***Out now: Fiona McFarlane's latest book HIGHWAY THIRTEEN***
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE
'Brilliant, fresh and compulsively readable'
ANN PATCHETT
'A blazing mystery . . . tremendous'
GUARDIAN
'Masterful storytelling'
WASHINGTON POST
'Gloriously orchestrated . . . kaleidoscopic'
IRISH TIMES
'A thrilling success'
WALL STREET JOURNAL
An epic tale of unsettlement, history, myth, art and love - and of a small boy lost in the Australian desert from the prize-winning author of The Night Guest and The High Places.
In September 1883, in a small town in the South Australian outback, six-year-old Denny Wallace goes missing.
As a dust storm sweeps across the landscape, the entire community is caught up in the search. Scouring the desert and mountains, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, policemen - confront their relationships with each other and with the ancient land they inhabit. A land haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day in which Denny could be found, or lost forever.
PRAISE FOR FIONA MCFARLANE
'I can't think of another writer working today who I admire more'
KEVIN POWERS, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE YELLOW BIRDS
'An extraordinary writer'
MICHELLE DE KRETSER, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF SCARY MONSTERS
'McFarlane has a gift for cutting into a story at precisely the right angle'
THE TIMES
'An intelligent and distinctive voice . . . a marvel'
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
'An exceptionally fine writer'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In McFarlane's expansive latest (after The High Places), the search for a missing boy in the Australian outback in 1883 casts lights on the tensions roiling beneath the surface of the English colony. One day, six-year-old Denny Wallace goes for a walk and disappears into a dust storm. Members of the small farming community help Denny's parents, Mathew and Mary, look for their son. Among the teeming cast are Minna Baumann, a newlywed who pines for her constable husband, Robert, after he joins the search party; Mr. Daniels, the sickly local vicar who is suspected of knowing what happened to Danny; Karl and Bess Rapp, itinerant artists who have come to paint the desert sunset; Cissy Wallace, one of Denny's five sisters, who has her sexual awakening as a result of the search; and Jimmy Possum, an Aboriginal tracker whose talismanic cloak is coveted by Mrs. Axam, the community's matriarch. But will their combined efforts lead to Denny's ultimate rescue? Though there isn't much of a plot, the vivid descriptions of the landscape, a lived-in feeling community, dozens of well-defined characters, and an honest look at the uneasy relationship between settlers and Australia's Indigenous population carry the reader along. Fans of Richard Flanagan and Peter Carey will love this.
