An eighty-year-old bundle of frayed letters tied with kitchen twine. Twenty-five years of betrayal. One discovery that changes everything.

In Paris in 2043, legendary fashion photographer Mackey McGill has sixty hours left to live. At ninety-seven, he has made his final decision and gathered those closest to him. But there is one thing he cannot bear to leave behind: a stack of letters that could unravel the story he has told about his life.

He intends to burn them. His grandson saves them from the flames.

The letters reach TJ Elliott, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who knows how to ask the questions Mackey would rather not answer. As TJ reads, he follows the story back to Louisville in 1962, when a young Mackey McGillacutty met Dink Westergaard. What happened between them would shape the next twenty-five years of Mackey’s life—and leave wounds that fame could never conceal.

Their story moves through the upheaval of the Vietnam era and into the fashion houses, photography studios, and late-night worlds of Paris, Milan, and New York. Mackey builds an extraordinary career behind the camera, capturing lives and faces for all to see while keeping the most consequential part of his own life hidden.

Now the letters speak for those who could not. With each passing hour, TJ comes closer to a truth that will change what Mackey’s family believes about him. Mackey must decide whether to tell them himself before his time runs out.

Sixty Hours ’til Sunset is a novel about the stories we preserve, the truths we bury, and the people we never stop seeking.

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