The Sun Walks Down

Set in September 1883 in the Colony of South Australia, the novel follows a community of settlers on the remote Willochra Plain, near the ancient Flinders Ranges, as they search for a six-year-old boy lost in the desert. The story unfolds over seven days and nights, shifting among more than a dozen perspectives to reveal the inner lives of the people drawn into the crisis.

Denny Wallace, a thin, fair-haired child, lives with his family on Undelcarra, a small wheat farm beneath a solitary red hill. His mother, Mary Wallace, is deaf and speaks little. His father, Mathew, is an English immigrant who came to South Australia following Mary's father, the Reverend Samuel Deniston, a celebrated preacher known as "the Southern Shepherd." One afternoon, while Denny's five sisters attend a wedding in the nearby town of Fairly and Mathew is out planting parsnips, Mary sends Denny to gather kindling. A dust storm sweeps down from the north and engulfs him. Disoriented, he tries to walk home but becomes lost.

The wedding is that of Minna Baumann, the 18-year-old daughter of Wilhelmina Baumann, a proud German widow who uses a wheelchair, to Constable Robert Manning. After the ceremony, Cissy Wallace, Denny's fierce and ambitious 15-year-old sister, herds her siblings home and discovers Denny is missing. She takes charge, assigning each sister a search direction, while Mathew rides out with Billy Rough, his Aboriginal hired hand, to search through the night.

Billy, born on this country 50 years earlier, carries a complicated history. Henry Axam, the founder of the large sheep station Thalassa, singled Billy out as a child for his cricket talent but also prevented him from completing his Aboriginal initiation ceremonies and banned the use of his language. After Henry drowned, Billy's second initiation could never be completed because the qualified elders had been killed, imprisoned, or had died of disease.

Meanwhile, Karl Rapp, a Swedish painter, and his English wife, Bess, camp in the foothills northeast of Fairly. Karl is consumed by the extraordinary sunsets that blaze across the sky each evening, turning the horizon apocalyptic red. He feels summoned to paint them but doubts his talent. Bess, a practical artist who works in black ink, is planning a children's book.

On the second day, Sergeant Foster arrives from Port Augusta with two Aboriginal trackers to lead the official search. At Thalassa, he meets Joanna Axam, the elderly matriarch who conceals her own injured arm beneath a shawl. Billy tries to recruit Tal, the best tracker in the district, but George Axam, Joanna's eldest son who runs the station, refuses to release him during shearing season. Cissy goes to town to send telegrams and encounters her beloved schoolteacher stepping out of a hotel with a new lover. Disillusioned, Cissy redirects her devotion toward Robert.

Denny, meanwhile, wanders the dry creek beds, dehydrated and frightened. Haunted by personal gods he believes live on the sun and emerge at sunset from the red hill, he is too scared to pray. His boots hurt, so he cuts the laces, hides the boots among tree roots, and keeps the laces in his pocket.

Mathew and Billy follow a scrambled trail into the hills and find Denny's boots. The trail leads into the Axam Range, where they spot campfire smoke. Billy tells Mathew he cannot enter the range because Aboriginal sacred law forbids it: His initiation was never completed, and the country is closed to him. Mathew attacks Billy in fury, but Billy, who has been losing their ritual sparring matches on purpose for years, pins Mathew down, strikes his nose, and knocks him unconscious.

That night, Denny spots Karl and Bess's campfire in a gorge. Watching from above, he sees Karl standing naked before the sunset, glowing gold, and perceives him as a god. He waits until they sleep, then creeps down to drink water and steal their apples. The next morning, Karl finds the boy asleep beside a rock, carries him to the gorge, and Bess bathes him, treats his blistered feet, feeds him porridge, and combs his hair.

Bess decides to keep Denny an extra day to finish sketches for her children's book, rationalizing that he needs rest while acknowledging the selfishness of prolonging a mother's suffering. They ride to Wilparra, an abandoned homestead. But Denny, who perceives Karl and Bess as gods trying to lure him to the sun, slips away during the night.

Mathew and Cissy, meanwhile, climb into the hills and discover the vicar, Mr. Daniels, delirious with fever in a cave. He has been wandering alone since setting out to search for Denny days earlier. Mary's stepmother, Muriel Deniston, arrives from the distant town of Goolwa carrying news that Joe, Mary's eldest son, has fathered an illegitimate child named Arthur, whom the family must take in.

Karl and Bess ride into Fairly and report that they found Denny but he ran away again. Minna takes charge in Robert's absence, sending Tal to recruit searchers. Bess travels to Undelcarra and tells Mary that Denny is alive. Mary touches Bess's forehead, then presses that hand to her own heart.

That night, Mary climbs the red hill and sets fire to the lone cypress pine on its summit, creating a beacon visible for 11 miles. The community mobilizes to beat back the flames before they reach the house. Out on the plain, Tal, who has been tracking Denny's bootless footprints, sees the burning hill and walks toward it. He finds Denny sitting motionless in the dark, unable to move because he believes the gods have reached his mother. Tal picks him up and carries him toward the light. Mary takes her son into her arms. Denny screams when he sees Bess, and Mary carries him inside.

In the aftermath, Mathew arrives home and erupts at Mary for the fire before seeing Denny at the kitchen table and collapsing into sobs of relief. Minna, restless with desire and lonely while Robert is away searching, has spent the night with Karl, who then departs with Bess. Billy decides to stay at Thalassa rather than return to Undelcarra, understanding his relationship with Mathew is broken. Mr. Daniels, having fled Thalassa in a feverish daze, is accidentally shot by a startled dray driver; Foster finds him and takes him into custody. Cissy sits on the verandah holding Bess's hand in silence, an awed connection the narrative suggests will shape her future.

An epilogue set in February 1901 finds Denny, now 23 and going by Deniston, at a wharf in Port Adelaide with his fiancée, Dotty, waving off Arthur, who is sailing to fight in the Boer War. The wheat farms on the Willochra have failed. Mary has died of meningitis from an ear infection. Cissy has pursued a career in nursing. Bess's children's book, Tom and the Wallaby, arrived years late, though the Rapps never sent for Denny. Karl later learned that the extraordinary sunsets were caused by the eruption of Krakatoa in the Dutch East Indies. Denny remembers almost nothing of his week in the desert except the fear, though vivid sensory memories of childhood on the Willochra sometimes return unbidden.