The Vanishing Moon

(Hardback)

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Description

An epic and intimate journey across two generations of a Midwestern family.

Reviews

Memory is all, says the narrator at the end of The Vanishing Moon. Yes, it is. This novel captures the collective memory of an American working-class family, with all its pain and poetry. In its dramatic sweep, the book becomes nothing less than a history of the twentieth century in the United States. Joseph Coulson is what we used to call (with apologies to the vegetarians) a meat and potatoes storyteller: clear, vivid, big-hearted. So many unheard voices speak and sing through his voice. Listen. Martn Espada

Joseph Coulson chronicles the American family with enormous intensity. His sense of history is vast, his sense of detail fine, Coulson is the ferryman to that America just beyond tragic and wondrous. John Reed

Vanishing Moonis the lyrical account of the Tollman familys demise, but it is so beautifully crafted that one keeps turning the pages rapidly; that is, when one isnt stopping to ponder its poignantly poetic phrases depicting the scenery and dynamic characters.The Historical Novels Review

The Vanishing Moon...explores human frailty with the simplicity and directness of haiku...at times achieves the quiet beauty of William Maxwell's finest workgenerous, episodic, elegiac but not sentimental...Coulson seems to want to bring Faulkner to Ohio. The Nation

Author Bio

Born in Detroit in 1957, Joseph Coulson is the author of three books of poetry- Graph, A Measured Silence, and The Letting Go. His full-length play, A Saloon at the Edge of the World (co-authored with William Relling Jr.), was staged as a showcase production in the 1995-96 T.A.M. Season of New American Plays. He has been the recipient of a David Gray Fellowship, selected by Robert Creeley, and a Ph.D. in American literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife Christine. This is his first novel.