Sunrise
Obreht’s electrifying novel opens in summer 2024, in the aftermath of a plane crash. Nina, a New York-based grad student and nanny, was on vacation with her boyfriend, Ben, when the small Cessna he was flying over a remote Wyoming lake developed engine trouble, and he pushed her out to save her life. Or is that what happened? Something feels off. Nina ponders this, but survival takes precedence. With her waterlogged backpack, she trudges through the mountainous woods in hope of rescue, rationing her protein bars and finally taking shelter in a dusty, abandoned mining town: a site that, as she learns, holds terrible secrets.
The town called Sunrise, a thriving hamlet in its Old West heyday, is the drawstring that pulls together multiple lives across more than a century. A subsequent section introduces Anton Vargas, a Tejano man who returns in 1902 to the place that cemented his reputation as a gunslinger and dime-novel hero twenty years earlier, as one of the famed “Greyrock Four.” And in 2003, Coll Yard, a young man heading up the historical society in the nearby town of Sand Draw, prepares for a reenactment of the now-mythic showdown at Sunrise. As fallout from a shameful event at a local bar engulfs the community, a writer from Denver arrives with information that Coll’s unprepared to face.
This revisionist Western has real teeth and first-rate plotting. Descriptions feel viscerally real, and at first, it may seem to emphasize atmosphere and character over story, but pay close attention—and keep going. In a puzzle-novel like this, when connections between different facets take time to materialize, one hopes the payoff will be worth it. Is it ever! The finale surpasses all expectations in this powerful, unique novel that asks why some stories are celebrated while others remain hidden.
