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OUTER SUNSET

Mark Ernest Pothier

Debut novel by Chicago Tribune/Nelson Algren Short Story Award-winning writer Mark Ernest Pothier.

"Three years ago, once it was clear our kids were gone for good, my wife packed the car with some clothes and things, told me she'd withdrawn half the savings, and, after a farewell which I cannot recall verbatim, she left." In the wake of his wife's unexpected departure, Jim Finley, a retired English teacher, living alone on the edge of San Francisco at the end of the century, reads his stack of books on the back porch where he's finally come to rest - like it or not - and sift through his past, preferably with a drink. That ends when his daughter brings home the worst news of her life, she has to move back in with him, and everything's upended: He learns how much easier it is to talk with his son's Ukrainian girlfriend than the grown man himself. He realizes that his ex-wife has fully launched into a new, larger life than the one they'd shared. And he continues to misconnect with Carol, his first date since college - a woman he enjoys talking to but doesn't quite hear. In a landscape of seismic shifts, Jim's is a timely story about the intimate place where deep, long-lasting change occurs in our lives. It's about learning how to revise, or live without, your dreams; of facing, up-close, the flaws of those nearest you; of seeing your kids grow away from you into more than you'd imagined; and of still being startled, in your fifties, at the awkwardness of a first date. In a wise, ironic voice somewhere between David Nicholls' Us, Mary Beth Keane's Ask Again, Yes, and Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, it is a story about finding beauty and trust in the midst of loss. Mark Ernest Pothier earned an MFA at San Francisco State University. After working more than 25 years in nonprofit communications, he now devotes himself to writing. His first published story, "The First Light of Evening", won a Chicago Tribune/Nelson Algren Short Story award, and was later republished by Amazon to become the best-selling Kindle Single upon which this novel is based. With his wife and kids, he has lived more than 30 years in San Francisco, where he sometimes sings with Slavyanka Chorus and is active in the Byzantine Catholic community. This is his first book.

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Book Published 2023-05-15 by University of Iowa

Comments

Outer Sunset traces one solitary man's late reawakening and rediscovery of what was and still is best in his life. Mark Ernest Pothier's debut is a wise and gentle meditation on last chances and the power of hope.

It's rare for a novel to probe the psyches of its characters as deeply as Mark Ernest Pothier does in Outer Sunset. Many writers don't even suspect such depths exist. They do, though, and here's the proof.

...an altogether impressive debut, a wise, elegantly written book about a transformational moment for a family and their city... Pothier has been working on this book on and off for 30 years, and today, he writes in a note after the text, he's older than his 58-year-old protagonist. It's an inspiring backstory, but it would be patronizing to call this a strong effort by a not-young first-time author. Insightful and bittersweet, "Outer Sunset" is - without qualification - a terrific novel.

...a graceful, wise, and tender novel... Beautiful and touching, Outer Sunset tells a stirring father-daughter tale about facing impending loss with faith, hope, forgiveness, and healing.

The father and daughter at the heart of this beautiful novel entirely captured mine. Mark Ernest Pothier has written an affecting story, both serious and funny, about a self-sufficient middle-aged man who finds himself suddenly confronted with the messy work of love and forgiveness in the face of looming mortality. I read it with a sense of quiet urgency and finished it with great satisfaction.

Outer Sunset is elegant but not showy, straightforward but not simple, serious but not humorless. Its subjects - money, disease, divorce, death, belief - are laid out in a pattern as complex as the layers of San Francisco life that every page of this novel reveals. The characters are complex too, rich and full of mystery and revelations and surprises. This is a deeply pleasurable and satisfying read.