Black Sun (Edward Abbey Novel)

Black Sun (Edward Abbey novel)

Black Sun is a 1971 novel by Edward Abbey about a rugged fire lookout who falls in love with an American girl half his age and then becomes wrongly blamed when she mysteriously disappears in the National Park where he works.

The term "black sun" was used often in Abbey's work, according to The New West of Edward Abbey by Ann Ronald (page 177). He used it first in his second book, Fire on the Mountain to describe a sketch Billy makes after they discover someone has shot Billy's favorite horse, Rascal. He also uses it twice in his non-fiction book, The Journey Home and once in Abbey's Road.

Many friends of Abbey have claimed the author called Black Sun his favorite of his works. But it was not well received by critics and the public. The first-run paperback edition by Avon sold only 100,000 copies, where the first run of paperback editions for Desert Solitaire and The Monkey Wrench Gang both sold more than a half million copies, according to Cahalan's "Edward Abbey, A Life." He wrote: "The New Yorker called Black Sun 'an embarrassingly bad novel.' Even Abbey's new friend Edward Hoagland -- who had first written to him on March 19, 1970 praising Desert Solitaire -- lamented in the New York Times Book Review that Black Sun was "not a masterpiece" like Desert Solitaire, complaining that "he does not always finish his books but publishes next-to-last drafts."