Sun House

An epic comedy, sixteen years in the making, about love, spirit, and the quest for transcendence in an anything-but-transcendent America, from the author of the perennial cult bestsellers The River Why and The Brothers K. 

A bolt from an Aero Mexico DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a Mexican girl and throwing the faith of a young American Jesuit into crisis. Jamey Van Zandt's mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed anger that he only unlashes once a year when he recklessly duels the Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman, Risa McKeig, runs through the streets of Seattle experiencing a shooting star moment that pierces her world with a love that will eventually help heal both the Jesuit and the angry actor.

The sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious journeys of this "unintentional menagerie" carry them to the healing lands of Montana's Elkmoon Beguine & Cattle Company, where nothing tastes better than four fingers of Maker's Mark mixed with glacier ice, nothing sounds lovelier than a lone flycatcher's mating song, and nothing seems less likely than the delight a bunch of urban sophisticates, Montana cowboys, road-weary musicians, and spiritual refugees begin to find in each other's company.          

With Sun House, David James Duncan continues the exploration of the search for meaning and love that he began in his acclaimed novels The River Why and The Brothers K. This stunning novel illuminates the contemporary American West through the prisms of Eastern wisdom and the unpredictable, expansive yearnings of the human heart.