Man in the Blue Moon

Starred review from July 2, 2012
Morris (Slow Way Home) has crafted a magical and mesmerizing page-turner rooted in hardscrabble Florida during WWI, based in part on a true family story. Ella Wallace is scrambling to keep her three sons and herself from the poorhouse after her opium-addicted husband vanishes. She owns a piece of land that reptilian banker Clive Gillespie, a spurned former suitor, would love to have, and he has leverage in the form of a mortgage on the property. But Ella finds an unexpected ally in her husband’s cousin Lanier Stillis, who arrives in unorthodox fashion and has some unusual talents, and the two collaborate until Lanier’s past catches up with him in a Shakespearean blaze of climactic action. Morris’s narrative is subtle and supple, with overtones of the wry Southernisms of Flannery O’Connor, the rural Florida backdrop of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and a good helping of powerful and mysterious faith. Book clubs should devour this rich, carefully observed mix of characters, time, and place; Morris deserves to break out of the regional-writer box. Agent: Laurie Liss, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Starred review from September 1, 2012
It's 1918, and in the small town of Dead Lakes, Florida, Ella Wallace runs the general store and struggles to raise her three boys and hold on to the family farm, a valuable property that contains a spring said to have curative powers. Town banker Clive Gillespie has his eye on the property and, together with a local evangelist, plans to build a lucrative resort. With the farm foreclosure looming comes the sudden and unconventional arrival of drifter Lanier Stillis, a man with his own mysterious healing powers. Lanier convinces Ella that together they can save the farm by harvesting the local trees. But when Lanier's troubled past catches up with him, the farm and the Wallace family are put in unexpected, life-threatening jeopardy. Drawing on a story from his grandfather's childhood, Morris has created a magical portrait of a rural southern town on the brink of personal and global change. Richly detailed and highly visual, Man in the Blue Moon carries readers quickly and completely into the heart of this tight-knit rural community. It is a beautifully written and deeply memorable story of abandonment and loss and of the redemptive powers of hard work, faith, and forgiveness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)