In what promises to be an extraordinary evening of story, song, and conversation, Montana Public Radio will celebrate the publication of award-winner and Missoula resident David James Duncan’s powerful new novel, Sun House, Friday, August 11, 2023. MTPR’s Lauren Korn (host of The Write Question) and Justin Angle (host of A New Angle) will preside over the festivities. Special musical guest is American singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault.

By all measures, the rollout of Sun House is a major publishing event with reviews and interviews already slotted in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

Sixteen years in the making, Sun House is an epic comedy about love, spirit, and the quest for transcendence in an anything-but-transcendent America. In it, Duncan continues exploring the American search for meaning and love that he began in his acclaimed novels The River Why (1983) and The Brothers K (1992). Set amid the gorgeous landscapes of the American West, the stunning new novel illuminates the contemporary world through the prisms of Eastern wisdom, cast-off ecstatic religious ideals, and the unpredictable, expansive yearnings of the human heart.

The spirited book launch will be presented in two segments, the first being an interview with Duncan conducted by Korn and Angle (who share the 7 o’clock hour on MTPR every Thursday and have previously collaborated in other “crossover” conversations). In the second part of the program, Duncan’s long-time friend, singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault, will join him on stage where Duncan will read passages from Sun House that Foucault will “illustrate” with music that he’ll improvise for the occasion.

Local bookseller Fact & Fiction will be selling pre-autographed copies of Sun House in The Wilma lobby.

Sun House will be released nationwide on August 8 through Little, Brown & Co. Publishing.

David James Duncan is the author of the classic novels The River Why and The Brothers K, the story collection River Teeth, the nonfiction collection and National Book Award finalist, My Story as Told by Water, the best-selling collection of “churchless sermons,” God Laughs & Plays, and, this August 8th, the novel legendary editor Michael Pietsch “will immodestly call David’s magnum opus” and writer William deBuys calls “one of the greatest imaginative achievements I’ve encountered in a lifetime of reading” Sun House.

David’s work has won three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, a Lannan Fellowship, the Western States Book Award, inclusion in Best American Sports Writing, Best American Catholic Writing, two volumes of Best American Essays, five volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing, an honorary doctorate from University of Portland, the American Library Association’s 2004 Award for the Preservation of Intellectual Freedom (with co-author Wendell Berry), and other honors. David lives on a charming little trout stream in Missoula, Montana, in accord with his late friend Jim Harrison’s advice to finish his life disguised as a creek.