Sunrises

Sunrises is the self-sufficient, ecologically responsible commune founded by Ash Wenstein and Saffron Wenstein, and it provides the formative social world of Mo Duvall-Wenstein’s childhood. More than a backdrop, it explains the double inheritance Mo carries into adulthood: a delight in eccentric generosity and communal energy, alongside a learned caution about belonging to communities whose members may disappear without warning.

Origins and Principles

Sunrises grew out of Ash Wenstein and Saffron Wenstein’s countercultural partnership. Saffron, originally Lynn Duvall of Brownsville, Texas, met Ash, then George Wenstein, at a recycling seminar in Chicago in 1975. They remained together without a conventional wedding, substituting a naming ceremony in which Saffron renamed him Ash. Their household rejected religion, television, junk food, Western medicine, and pets; the last prohibition came from Ash’s allergy rather than an animal-rights principle. Their politics combined veganism, ecological self-sufficiency, and hostility toward government authority.

The commune’s central building was a barely refurbished old barn with literally no interior walls. The open architecture made the household a communal rather than private space, while the steady flow of visitors turned it into an improvised social institution. Ash initially gave the place the name Sunrises, then changed it after people began leaving drugged-out teenagers at the gate, apparently mistaking the commune for a rehabilitation facility. The renaming captures the gap between the founders’ ideal of responsible communal living and outsiders’ fantasies about what the place offered.

Daily Life and Social Atmosphere

People entered and left Sunrises constantly. Mo loved the laughter, music, and energy that newcomers brought into her home, but she learned not to form friendships because children often disappeared within months when their parents could not adapt to Ash and Saffron’s standards of “living responsibly.” Even residents who fitted in rarely stayed longer than a few months; their restless temperaments kept them moving. Sunrises therefore offered intense sociability without continuity, teaching Mo that warmth and impermanence could arrive together.

Her parents’ way of life also made ordinary days theatrical. Ash once decided to spray-paint the family Volkswagen van an Easter-egg purple, while Saffron took Mo to a nuclear-energy protest dressed as a radioactive Statue of Liberty. Such episodes made childhood adventurous and unpredictable. Mo adored her parents’ love, generosity, and attention, especially the feeling of being the center of their world. The commune’s emotional abundance was genuine even when its practical arrangements were unstable.

Education and Family Formation

Sunrises shaped Mo’s education as directly as it shaped her social habits. She was homeschooled until thirteen, with Saffron maintaining elaborate lesson plans for the county education officials’ surprise inspections. In practice, however, Saffron’s attention was repeatedly diverted by whatever political cause seemed most urgent, leaving lessons unfinished and Mo to pursue “independent study.” Ash’s earlier life as a certified public accountant supplied the practical knowledge that allowed Mo to balance her checkbook, compensating for the gaps in her formal education.

This upbringing gave Mo both confidence in unconventional living and a clear sense of what it failed to provide. At thirteen, she rode her bicycle to the Bowdry County Public Schools office with only her birth certificate and an essay explaining why she needed immediate enrollment. The act was a decisive movement away from the commune’s enclosed educational ideology and toward institutions she believed were necessary for college and an independent future.

Legacy in Mo’s Adult Life

The hospitality associated with Sunrises echoes later in Mo’s encounters with Grundy’s residents. Nate Gogan’s wife, Gertie Gogan, sends pot roast, potatoes, and berry cobbler to welcome Mo after her long drive, explaining that a woman should not have to cook for herself after traveling so far. The gesture matters because it offers the neighborly belonging Mo expected to be absent from the town; food becomes a material sign that she is wanted. Her eventual decision to work at the Blue Glacier Saloon similarly turns labor, conversation, and proximity to Evie DuChamp into a cautious first step into community.

Sunrises also forms a contrast with the more durable network Mo builds in Alaska. The open barn and revolving population provided affection without permanence, whereas Grundy gradually offers a home, employment, friendship, medical care, and family continuity. After Mo becomes pregnant with Cooper Graham’s child, Gracie Graham helps arrange confidential care through Dr. Moder, who makes a house call, explains the unusually high hormone levels associated with shortened werewolf gestation, and gives Mo prenatal vitamins and a reference booklet titled “What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Werewolf.” The care is secretive because Mo fears small-town gossip, but it is also practical and sustained rather than merely idealistic.

By the time Mo purchases her house in Grundy, she recognizes it as the first place she has truly considered her own home and cannot imagine raising the baby elsewhere. Her later marriage to Cooper and her twenty-percent share in the Blue Glacier Saloon complete the contrast with Sunrises: belonging is no longer a temporary emotional atmosphere but an economic, domestic, and reproductive structure. The saloon even establishes a nursery so Mo can return to work after maternity leave, joining care and paid labor in a way her childhood commune never formalized.

Narrative Significance

Sunrises represents the formative promise and limitation of countercultural community. It produces generosity, imagination, ecological commitment, and a vivid resistance to convention, but its lack of walls and constant circulation also deprive Mo of lasting peer attachments and institutional security. The commune’s values remain part of her—she is receptive to eccentric people, communal care, and alternative ways of living—yet her adult trajectory shows her revising those values through permanence.

Its legacy also sharpens the novel’s treatment of family and inheritance. Cooper Graham explains werewolf identity as genetic, with packs spread across the world and increasing numbers of dead lines as werewolves marry outside the pack. Sunrises offers a human parallel: identity is likewise transmitted through family practice, naming, ideology, and everyday labor rather than through biology alone. Mo does not simply reject her parents’ world; she carries its generosity into a new community while refusing its instability. In that transformation, Sunrises becomes the origin against which her chosen home in Grundy is measured.