John Murray wins six-way auction for Sterling HolyWhiteMountain’s debut novel

John Murray has acquired Takes the Sun by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate, and current Jones’ lecturer at Stanford University.

Nicholas Pearson, publishing director at the John Murray Publishing Group, acquired British Commonwealth rights excluding Canada in a six-way auction from Emma Leong at Janklow and Nesbit. Publication is scheduled for 2027.

PJ Mark sold North American rights in a “heated” nine-way auction to Jenna Johnson at FSG with other rights sold to date including France (Albin Michel), Finland (Siltala) and Germany (Bastei Lübbe).

The novel’s description reads: “Reverberating across decades and generations, Takes the Sun is a choral work mapping a constellation of characters bound by family, history and the land of the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. It follows them as they attempt to make lives for themselves in their homeland, and their journeys beyond Montana to other parts of America and to the Middle East during the Gulf War.

“In startling prose rippling with raw energy, Takes the Sun captures the messiness of individual lives – kinship, grief, masculinity, survival, love – laying bare the struggles of contemporary American Indians. HolyWhiteMountain is a singular talent in American fiction: fierce, honest, tender and profoundly moving.”

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain said: “Takes the Sun took a long time to surface. Now that it has, I am excited to work with Nick – given the list of extraordinary writers he has edited — in order to find the best, final form for this book.”

Pearson said: “Sterling is a unique American voice the like of which I haven’t encountered before: unexpected, powerful, wise, completely immersive. While Takes the Sun is a story about a particular people and their particular struggles, it manages to capture aspects of all our lives. We are thrilled at John Murray to be publishing Sterling and looking forward to sharing this remarkable book.”