Description

‘This book is a fever dream, a mood, a spell, an entire climate filled with a particular kind of desert winter light – harsh, unsparing, and beautiful . . . Tremendously moving’ Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

Eloise has known only two great loves: her husband, Lewis, and the desert. An academic living in Brooklyn, she is mesmerized by tales of the American Southwest, that paradise built on quicksand with less water every passing year. When the couple set out on a road trip tracing the course of the Colorado River, Eloise researches its lakes and dams, while Lewis grieves his mother in the prickly wasteland where he never felt quite at home.

Together they cruise past gaping canyons, glittering casinos and motels gone to seed, travelling through the red-gold light of nearby wildfires. They are young and they have each other, and for a moment the whole world seems to shimmer with glorious possibility. But within the close confines of the car a chasm starts to open between them.

This is a hauntingly beautiful love story about the mystery of other people – at once an excavation of a relationship, and an elegy for a desert running dry.

PRAISE FOR ELEGY, SOUTHWEST:

‘Astounding, heartbreaking, and important’ ELVIA WILK

‘Elegantly weaves a love story with deep research on its cinematic setting’ LAUREN OYLER

‘Full of grit and a vivid, tender affection for the environments of the American West’ ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN

‘Strikingly brilliant’ HEIDI JULAVITS

‘An expansive, ambitious novel’ ELLENA SAVAGE

‘The perfect showcase for Watts’ considerable skill at rendering humanity and climate grief’ Literary Hub