The critically acclaimed author of The Inland Sea returns with an emotionally eviscerating love story set against the stark and prickly beauty of the American southwest
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'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. Honestly, I feel that part of me is still actually living in the book. Tremendously moving' Leslie Jamison
'Elegy, Southwest is a novel composed of the details that accumulate in the wake of loss: of a relationship, of a weather pattern, of a moment in time. Watts elegantly weaves a love story with deep research on its cinematic setting to ask a poignant question: What do you do with all that remains from the tragedy of hyper - specific memories, to photographs, to the electronic devices we use to track our "health data" -after something ends?' Lauren Oyler
'Her sensitive and beautifully wrought observations on the environment, love, and loss are perfectly and painfully attuned to our shifting world. This is an astounding, heartbreaking, and important book. You'll be different after reading it' Elvia Wilk
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'Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American Southwest. While wildfires rage, the couple trace the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Eloise, an academic, researches the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry, while Lewis grieves his mother and struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never felt quite at home.
Together they cruise past gaping canyons, blinking motels and lonely stretches of wilderness, trying to understand this uncanny landscape where Georgia O'Keeffe built her home and avant-garde artists dig mysterious installations in the sand. When Eloise begins to suspect she might be pregnant, she hopes to turn Lewis's attention from the past to the future, but their relationship continues to fracture as they head towards a destination unknown.
Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.
