Historical fiction novel Sunrise by Téa Obreht hits the shelves on August 11.
It tells the stories of three individuals, who are separated by time and circumstance but share the experience of the strangely well-maintained but seemingly abandoned titular town, which holds the missing link to a 100-year-old ghost story.
In 2024, Nina Terzić is lost, alone and freezing on the shore, after her plane crashes into a lake, and her boyfriend, who was flying it, goes missing.
With a dying phone and four protein bars, she stumbles upon Sunrise where she takes shelter in a stable, but then, she discovers a corpse.
In 1902, 45-year-old town founder and gunslinger Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise after two decades, where he reunites with an old friend and quickly takes charge of a group searching for a missing boy.
In 2003, Coll is putting together Sunrise’s annual play honouring the legacy of Anton, but then an upstart, would-be author comes to him with questions about the beloved figure, which threatens everything he thought he knew about the city and himself.
“I’d been trying to write about a dying gunslinger since at least 2015,” the author said in an interview.
“At the same time, I’ve always been fascinated by ghost towns and, since 2018 I’d been slowly clattering away at a novella about a young woman who ends up in one after surviving a plane crash in the wilderness.
“It wasn’t until I landed on Coll’s story that I finally realised that all three weren’t just connected, but inseparable. After that, the first draft came together in about a year,” she added.
