Where the Sun Shines Out

A raw, unflinching literary debut for fans of Dennis Lehane and Tom Franklin examining the aftershocks of survival—and the price of salvation.

In the blue-collar town of Chittenango, New York, two young boys are abducted from a local festival and taken to a cabin in the woods. One is kept; one is killed. When they are next seen, ten-year-old Dean has escaped by swimming across Oneida Lake holding his brother’s dead body.

As the years pass, the people of Chittenango struggle to cope with the collateral damage of this unspeakable act of violence, reverberations that disrupt the community and echo far beyond. With nothing holding it together, Dean’s family disintegrates under the twin weights of guilt and grief—and the unspoken acknowledgment that the wrong child survived. At the center of it all, Dean himself must find a place in a future that never should have been his.

In a sweeping narrative spanning decades and told from alternating points of view, Where the Sun Shines Out tells the story of a town and the inevitable trauma we inflict upon each other when we’re trying our best. Exploring the bonds—and breakdowns—of families, Kevin Catalano’s fearless debut reminds us that although the path to redemption is pockmarked, twisted, and often hidden from view, somehow the sun makes it through.

Kevin Catalano was born in Chittenango, NY, and met all of the surviving Munchkin actors as a child. His stories have appeared in [PANK], Gargoyle Magazine, Used Furniture Review, storySouth, Surreal South '13, Exigencies Anthology, and others. He received an MFA from Rutgers-Newark, and he lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.