The sun walks down

In McFarlane's expansive latest (after The High Places), the search for a missing boy in the Australian outback in 1883 casts lights on the tensions roiling beneath the surface of the English colony. One day, six-year-old Denny Wallace goes for a walk and disappears into a dust storm. Members of the small farming community help Denny's parents, Mathew and Mary, look for their son. Among the teeming cast are Minna Baumann, a newlywed who pines for her constable husband, Robert, after he joins the search party; Mr. Daniels, the sickly local vicar who is suspected of knowing what happened to Danny; Karl and Bess Rapp, itinerant artists who have come to paint the desert sunset; Cissy Wallace, one of Denny's five sisters, who has her sexual awakening as a result of the search; and Jimmy Possum, an Aboriginal tracker whose talismanic cloak is coveted by Mrs. Axam, the community's matriarch. But will their combined efforts lead to Denny's ultimate rescue? Though there isn't much of a plot, the vivid descriptions of the landscape, a lived-in feeling community, dozens of well-defined characters, and an honest look at the uneasy relationship between settlers and Australia's Indigenous population carry the reader along. Fans of Richard Flanagan and Peter Carey will love this. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc. (Feb.)

Set in arid Southern Australia in 1883, this tale of a farming community's search for a missing child offers intimate human drama, ruminations on the intersections of art and life, and a sweeping, still relevant view of race and class in Australia--and by extension, the U.S. Six-year-old Denny Wallace wanders off his family farm during a sudden dust storm in the novel's gorgeously rendered, anxiety-provoking first pages. The next scene, describing a wedding Denny's sisters happen to be attending in the nearby town, charms with sexy innuendo and mild comedy. The tonal switch, jarring but effective, prepares the reader for plotting and characterizations that repeatedly confound expectations. Organized into the seven days and nights of searching for Denny, the suspense story--will he be found in time?--is a strong foundation for the novel's larger ambitions. The treacherous beauty of Australia's landscape comes vividly to life as a metaphor for the multiple human dramas unfolding. Australian-born McFarlane excels at creating a broad perspective on 19th-century Australia. The cast is Dickensian in size, but there are no caricatures. With a line of description here, a snatch of dialogue there, every character develops a fertile interior life: Denny's sisters and financially strapped parents; the lusty young bride and groom from the wedding; the uncomfortably privileged members of a wealthy ranching family; a visiting Swedish artist and his wife who disagree on art's relationship to life. Indigenous people, taken for granted by the Whites, play particularly central roles, participating in the search with more skill than the White employers they observe with disdain. Even outsiders, like an Afghan trader passing through, are spotlighted in set-piece monologues. Although at times Denny's would-be saviors, wrapped up in their private issues, almost forget about him, the boy remains the reader's point of gravity as he navigates a frightening world with a child's intuition. A masterpiece of riveting storytelling. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.