The author, an Australian himself, conceived of THE SUNDOWNERS as "a novel in which the people weren't troubled by neuroses and didn't blame the world for their own shortcomings." With his great admiration for the self-reliant Australians, Cleary vividly and often poetically etches the saga of the Carmodys.

This is a sundowner family in the rural Australia of the 1920s, always on the move from job to job, heading toward the horizon.

"THE SUNDOWNERS has a nostalgic warmth that makes it out of the ordinary." (The New York Times)