Eighty Days of Sunlight

After suffering a childhood “accident” involving a campfire and a bullet, Jason Han spends his childhood being cared for by a doctor in Princeton, New Jersey while the rest of his family lives in a factory town near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Years later, as they prepare for college, Jason and his older brother, Tommy, reluctantly work together to investigate their father’s suicide. Ultimately, the investigation concludes violently, and the brothers move to Pittsburgh where they attempt to cohabitate peacefully while working to settle their father’s complicated estate. Together, they explore the city once described as “hell with the lid off,” full of post-industrial landscapes and sultry coeds. The brothers also travel landscapes of guilt, betrayal, and secrets as they try to figure out what destroyed their family—and how to save what’s left of it. Eighty Days of Sunlight is Yune’s debut novel, a poignant coming-of-age tale that brilliantly tackles the prickly relationship between two brothers, exploring themes of trust, identity, and loss.

Robert Yune was born in Seoul, South Korea. As a Navy brat, he traveled around the world, moving 11 times by the time he turned 18.

Yune has published fiction in The Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Avery, among others. In 2008, he received a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2012, he was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction and was one of five finalists for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, selected by Sherman Alexie and Colin Channer.

From 2010-2013, Yune served as fiction editor of The Fourth River. He has worked as a behavioral health researcher, a census enumerator, and a stand-in for George Takei. He currently lives and teaches in Pittsburgh.