Man in the Blue Moon
"Michael Morris is one of my favorite Southern writers..Man in the Blue Moonis 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"A Place Called WiregrassandSlow Way Homewere both showered with critical  acclaim. His 2004 novellaLive Like You Were Dyingwas a finalist for the  Southern Book Critics Circle Award...Look forMan in the Blue Moonto eclipse  them all. (Florida Times Union)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 ofTheir 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. -Publishers WeeklyThe 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