Papa on the Moon
by Marco North
What happens to the dreamers and the hard-luck cases, the washed-up lovers and the wild-eyed children when life gets messy?
Here is a novel-in-stories with a structure as raw and unexpected as the characters who inhabit it. Paul, the child of an ostracized Jewish pig farmer, searches for meaning in the most unexpected places— from the bottom of the local swimming pool to the galley of a Navy battleship. Along the way, we crack open the private lives of his parents before and after their divorce, and get to know his brother, who spends time in a mental institution. We ride shotgun with Hitch, a wannabe musician who walks out on his terminally ill wife. Trish, a single mother in a backwater town, celebrates her disabled son’s birthday. The threads all weave together in the near-operatic final story, “The Year of the Horse,” a harrowing account of a mysterious young boy living in a Russian village.
This unconventional and disarming set of interconnected stories about people stranded in spiritual quicksand, swimming against life’s empty promises, will find its way under your skin. Papa on the Moon digs deep, a starkly etched fever dream about everyday heroes scraping across the rock bottom of regret, love, and loss, climbing toward life’s most simple beauties.
"A collection of cunningly conceived, poetically descriptive tales
with layer upon layer of intrigue."
- Kirkus Reviews
"There is so much deep observation and reflection in these stories and such rich depth, yet relatively few words. A novel-from-stories like this is a challenging undertaking at the best of times and I admire North's ambition and the success
of that ambition even more."
- The Bookbag
