The Moonlight Man
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Newbery Medal–winning author Paula Fox's gripping and sensitive portrayal of a teenage girl who discovers her father is not the man she thought he was.
Catherine Ames's father, Harry, has always been a mystery. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she has spent most of her life in a Montreal boarding school. When Harry suggests a month-long stay with him at his summer cabin in Nova Scotia, Catherine is thrilled. Finally she'll have the kind of relationship with her father that other girls at school have with theirs.
But the bright summer quickly darkens. Harry drinks—a lot. The more Catherine witnesses his drinking, the more she begins to hate him. Only, Catherine can't help but love him too. A travel writer with a poet's tongue, Harry is clever and exciting, and tells wonderful stories—until he drinks again, and the playful father that takes her on picnics becomes someone dark and frightening.
How can the man she grew up wishing to be close to seem so far away? And how can Catherine bring him back to her?
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, The Moonlight Man is a lyrical and emotional account of love, acceptance, and the difficult lessons of growing up.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A new Paula Fox novel is always a cause for celebrationshe is one of America's most talented writers. Her past books for young adults (One-Eyed Cat, The Slave Dancer, A Place Apart, et al.) have won her numerous awards, including the Newbery Medal, and her latest ranks as one of the best she's ever written. Looking forward to spending the summer with the father she barely knows, 15-year-old Catherine is left to wait for three long weeks at her Montreal boarding school, with no word from him to explain his absence. Finally he calls, and she meets him in Nova Scotia, beginning an extraordinary summer. Harry Ames is elegant, poetic, mysterious, quixotica complex figure Catherine "studies like a book.'' Her parents were divorced when she was three; she wants to see what it was in her father that her mother once loved. It wasn't his drinkingHarry goes on binges that horrify and repulse Catherine; it wasn't his facile ability to lie; it wasn't the way ``he thrived on chaos.'' But she learns that he takes nothing in life for granted; he challenges her to examine her perceptions and actions carefully. Fox's subtle use of language and unique storytelling gifts create a world so complete and so rich that the reader hates to leave it. At one point, Catherine reflects that her father ``seemed about to lead her into a dance to music she had never heard.'' This story, too, is music as we only rarely hear it. (12-up)
