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by Michael Morris
"He’s a gambler at best. A con artist at worst," her aunt had said of the handlebar-mustached man who snatched Ella Wallace away from her dreams of studying art in France. Eighteen years later, that man has disappeared, leaving Ella alone and struggling to support her three sons.
While the world is embroiled in World War I, Ella fights her own personal battle to keep the mystical Florida land that has been in her family for generations from the hands of an unscrupulous banker. When a mysterious man arrives at Ella’s door in an unconventional way, he convinces her he can help her avoid foreclosure, and a tenuous trust begins. But as the fight for Ella’s land intensifies, it becomes evident that things are not as they appear. Hypocrisy and murder soon shake the coastal town of Apalachicola and jeopardize Ella’s family.
"Starred Review. [A] magical and mesmerizing page-turner...Book clubs should devour this rich, carefully observed mix of characters, time, and place; Morris deserves to break out of the regional-writer box." - Publishers Weekly
"The reader may hear echoes of Harper Lee...or of Flannery O'Connor’s Southern grotesques...or even of Huck Finn...But Morris has his own voice and his own story, and he tells it with uncommon skill and compassion." - Washington Post
"Michael Morris is one of my favorite Southern writers. Man in the Blue Moon is a beautifully wrought portrayal of small town Southern life where poverty, tragedy, and human love engage in a ritualistic dance...one of the best portraits of a small Southern town I've ever encountered." - Pat Conroy
This information about Man in the Blue Moon was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Michael Morris is the author of the award winning novel, A Place Called Wiregrass, and Slow Way Home, named one of the best novels of the year by the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the St. Louis Dispatch. His novella, Live Like You Were Dying, was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. A native of rural Florida, he currently resides in Alabama.
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