Starlight and Moonshine

(Hardback)

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In early 1980s Detroit, during the year following the drunk driving death of their alcoholic mother, a chorus of family voices grapple with haunting memories of the joys, regrets and the strains of love that will reverberate throughout all of their lives.

Late on a frigid March night in 1980, during the last snowfall of Detroit's winter, Hannah Fallon, driving home drunk, loses control of her car, slams through a cyclone fence and into an enormous, 150-year-old elm tree. The accident kills her, and over the next several months, her husband, her son Jack, and her daughters Colleen and Mary struggle to accept their mother's reckless death. Jack, a maintenance worker at a local hospital, is beginning to realize he's gay, his father, James, spirals into a such vacuum of grief for his late wife that he begins avoiding his children, while Colleen and Mary navigate their own acute sense of loss while having to deal on a daily basis with their overbearing paternal Aunt, Addy who continues to insert herself into the family just as she has done for decades, infuriating the children as she tries to parent and control them. The story of the devastated, unravelling Fallon family, told through the varying viewpoints of the siblings and their father, explores the loss that resonates so powerfully within each of them, as they try to find their paths forward beyond grief.

Author Bio

Joseph O'Malley's short fiction has appeared in such magazines as Glimmer Train, Cimmaron Review, and A Public Space. He is the author of a collection of short stories entitled Great Escapes from Detroit. He was born in Detroit and lives in New York City, Like his first novel, his debut novel, Starlight and Moonshine, also takes place in Detroit.