Sombrio

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Shortlisted for the 2020 Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction

Vulnerable and hallucinatory, Rhonda Waterfall writes an alarming and vivid West Coast novel. Sombrio, set in the rain forest on the outer coast of Vancouver Island takes us into the dark heart of lost childhoods. Three men, an artist, his apprentice, and an ex-bank robber turned poet seek refuge in an abandoned squatters shack in order to evade the chaos predicted to erupt at the dawn of the twenty-first century. When it is widely reported that airplanes will plummet from the sky, economic structures will collapse and the thin threads that hold society together will crumble. As New Years approaches and a windstorm descends upon the men, their thin hold on reality begins to unravel and fray. Each man must grapple with his past and with his need for fame or infamy along with what their disastrous choices have wrought for their children. This is a tale of madness, art, love, addiction, and paternal responsibility.