David Johansson (BA, 1986)
Spire, 2008
ISBN: 9780615189505
Caught between Baby Boomers and Generation X, come Americans who grew up without war and without terror. Cast into the new millennium, they discover that sensual pleasure no longer satisfies and that twentieth-century dreams have disappeared. They become The New Refugees, inhabiting a world where women and men cannot trust each other and where nothing but the law holds the country together.
Best friends in college, Barton, Jordan and Helmut, drift into the bewildering world of American adulthood. Successful by society’s standards, their prosperity is invaded by a gnawing fear they cannot name. Together they establish a law firm, but then the marriage of Barton and Jordan tests their relationship with Helmut, a provocative man whose brilliance in the courtroom conceals the secrets of his private life. Barton and Jordan, faced with their fading youth, doubt their roles as husband and wife, and when a financial crisis hits – loyalties are tested – both to each other and to their past notions of themselves.
Rife with love and betrayal, sex and rivalry, Skin of Sunset explores the new pursuit of happiness, while an unexpected fate sweeps the three friends toward revenge and murder. Skin of Sunset delivers the saddest words in the English language – it’s too late, even as a shiver of delight descends before the sunset’s fiery end.