Awards
1992 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award winner.
Staff Pick
It's been a year since I first laid eyes on this book, and I'll tell you not one day has passed that I haven't thought about it. Tom Spanbauer's The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon has been out since the early 1990s, but the story of Shed and his extraordinary life in Excellent, Idaho, is just as fresh and exciting today. Drawing upon tropes of the colonized Western genre and exploring the landscape of his own unique style, Spanbauer imparts the accounts of his ancestors, writing into fiction the overlooked story of whorehouses, queer love, and natives of a land that is no more. Recommended By Alex Y., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is an American epic of the old West for our own times — a novel huge in its imaginative scope and daring in its themes.
The narrator is Shed, or Duivichi-un-Dua, a half-breed bisexual boy who makes his living at the Indian Head Hotel in the little turn-of-the-century town of Excellent, Idaho. The imperious Ida Richilieu is Shed's employer, the town's mayor and the mistress, and the mistress and owner of this outrageously pink whorehouse.
Together with the beautiful prostitute Alma Hatch, and the philosophical, green-eyed, half-crazy cowboy Dellwood Barker, this collection of misfits and outcasts make up the core of Shed's eccentric family. And although laced with the ugliness and cruelty of the frontier West — Shed is raped by the same man who then murders the woman he thinks is his mother, and the Mormon townspeople bring a fiery end to Ida's raucous way of life — the love and acceptance that tie this family together provide the true heart of this novel.
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a beautifully told, mythic tale that is as well a profound meditation on sexuality, race and man's relationship to himself and the natural world.
Review
"Freud would have had a field day. The 384 pages offer plenty of plot twists, humor, graphic but not prurient sex, didacticisms, some magic realism (North American-style) and a consistent view of life that might be termed "rebellious romanticism" for the 1990's. A different view of the West where the bisexuals and prostitutes wear the white hats, gender is up for grabs, and every permutation of love will have its way." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Dazzlingly accomplished." Washington Post Book World
Review
"Haunting and earthy, this deeply felt tale of love and loss is told by Shed, a half-breed bisexual Indian....Spanbauer fuses raunchy dialogue, pathos, local color, heartbreak and a serious investigation of racism in this stunning narrative." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Spanbauer's masterful plot is delightfully unpredictable and compelling." Library Journal
About the Author
Tom Spanbauer is the author of the novel Faraway Places. he lives in Portland, Oregon, and New York City.