Synopses & Reviews
Sid Dulaney, in his mid-thirties, between jobs and short on funds, has moved back to Tucson to take care of his beloved grandmother. To hold down the cost of her prescriptions, he reluctantly starts smuggling medications over the border. His picaresque misadventures involve the lovable eccentrics at her retirement village, Mexican gang threats, a voluptuous former babysitter, midnight voicemails from his exasperated ex-girlfriend, and, perplexingly, a giraffe. This first novel by the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award proves Waters is an important new voice in American fiction. A big, rollicking, character-filled novel, Sunland is an entertaining and humane view at life on the margins in America today.
Review
“Don Waters shows he’s in the top rank of the new generation of American writers. This beautiful, rambunctious novel takes us on a wild ride across all kinds of borders, yinning and yanging between Mexico and the USA, youth and age, faith and betrayal, legal and outlaw, sober and stoned, and last but by no means least, love and the Void. The writing is gorgeous, the characters ring true on every page, and the story hurtles along with many a hairpin twist and turn. Fasten your seatbelt when you open this book, and hang on.” -- Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Review
“I deeply envy readers about to embark on their first trip to Sunland. Don Waters's novel is a zany adventure, a borderland thrill ride through the super-saturated Sonoran desert led by a rakish tour guide. A witty riot from first page to last!” -- Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn
Review
"A seriously comic novel about the expense of good intentions in the twenty-first century—a compelling, involving novel that made me laugh out loud." Robert Boswell, author of Tumbledown
Review
"Sunland is an immersive, tough, funny, and propulsive bildungsroman, beautifully written, evoking the landscapes of Tucson and Sonora and everything in between with verve and scorching authenticity.” -- Don Lee, author of The Collective
Review
"An unlikely drug dealer comes of age in a fast-paced, dynamic new novel of ethics and identity. In richly descriptive and propulsive prose, Don Waters’s dynamic debut Sunland dissects the meanings of aging, manhood, family and the borders erected between people and nations, all against the backdrop of the unforgiving Arizona sun. His mid-thirties protagonist Sid Dulaney experiences a delayed, yet highly potent, coming of age in a novel that explores many questions, including how to separate what is against the law from what is ethically right or wrong. Waters, whose previous book, the short-fiction collection Desert Gothic, won an Iowa Short Fiction Award, offers finely tuned and fast-moving prose punctuated with unique descriptive language.. . . While short, readable and fast-paced, Sunland leaves the reader with plenty of weighty matters for consideration long after the final page has been turned." ForeWord, Fall 2013
Review
“This offbeat, droll debut novel from Reno, Nev., native Waters, author of the collection Desert Gothic¸ concerns a disillusioned 30-something man’s struggles to put his life back together after a relationship goes awry. . . . Though occasionally too quirky for its own good, this is a diverting narrative a of a young man’s roundabout path to finding his way again.” Publishers Weekly, June 24, 2013
Review
“Waters, author of the story collection, Desert Gothic (2007), sneaks some serious issues into what is most often a lighthearted, sometimes zany, account of a compassionate man . . . An entertainingly offbeat first novel.” Booklist, September 1, 2013
Review
"Waters displays masterful ability -- and no small dosage of chutzpah -- in letting Sidney tell his story his way. . . . Sunland can be read as a satire on elder care in the United States. Sidney represents family as inexpert caregiver, well-intentioned yet self-absorbed, self-absorbed yet lacking self-comprehension, ill-equipped to deal with the aged and aging and just growing up. We readers are left to ponder what to expect in our golden years." Portland Oregonian, 11/3/2013
Synopsis
The picaresque misadventures of a devoted grandson turned border smuggler
About the Author
Don Waters won the Iowa Short Fiction Award for his story collection, Desert Gothic. His fiction has been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize, Best of the West, and New Stories from the Southwest. His journalism has appeared in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Outside. Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, he currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Sunland is his first novel.