Author(s): Fiona McFarlane

Fiction | Avenue Staff Picks

The moving new novel from the bestselling author of The Night Guest. In September 1883, the South Australian town of Fairly huddles under strange, vivid sunsets and enormous dust storms. One of its own has gone missing - six-year-old Denny Wallace - and the whole town is intent on finding him. As they search the desert and mountains for the lost child, the residents of Fairly - newlyweds, landowners, farmers, mothers, artists, Indigenous trackers, cameleers, children, schoolteachers, widows, maids, policemen - explore their own relationships with the complex landscape of the Flinders Ranges, its unsettling history, and the looming threat of agricultural failure. The colonial Australia of The Sun Walks Down is unfamiliar, multicultural, and noisy with opinions, arguments, longings, and terrors. It's haunted by many gods - the sun among them, rising and falling on each day in which Denny could be found, or lost forever.