Roll Back the Sun, by Michael Baldwin, is a 100,000-word literary romance. RBTS is a jazz-infused love quadrangle fueled by ambition, betrayal, obsession, the War in Afghanistan, and the universe's lust for love. Four almost-straight, white, Texas musicians jazz-jangle an erratic, erotic journey from 1985 to 2002, trying to amorously connect, to cope with the conflicts and paranoia of the times, to find love, success, and beauty in a broken world.

Friends since childhood, musicians Max and Larry, simultaneously fall in love with Kitty, but perhaps for different reasons. Larry's ex-wife, JJ, helps Kitty cope with their pursuit of her, and falls in love with Kitty herself. Kitty marries Larry to her regret and has an affair with Max, which Larry discovers. Their ruined relationships implode on September 11, 2001, as the twin towers collapse. Max leaves to lick his wounds by reporting on the war in Afghanistan. He is blown up, rescued by a Sufi mystic, survives attack by the Taliban, and returns home to joy, rejection, and death. But all is not lost in a universe of infinite possibilities.

RBTS invokes elements of poetry, the supernatural, nature symbolism, and parallel universes. Each chapter has the title of a jazz tune that figures somehow in the story. Roll Back the Sun is probably the first novel to use a knowledge of neuroscience to help develop the characters' personalities, thinking, and conversation. Roll Back the Sun is perhaps the greatest literary love story since Dr. Zhivago.