2023 Book Review #39:When the Moon Turns Blue

 

This book caught my eye on the "new books" shelf at our library.  The author was not familiar to me, and now that I'm done with this, her second novel, I want to read her first one and then hopefully more. It is excellently executed around a sensitive subject especially for people living the southern USA.

STORY SUMMARY

Harry Cline, married to Marietta, is dead.  He died from an illness that only he, Marietta, and Marietta's best friend Gordon knew about.  On the morning of his funeral, a horrible ice storm sweeps into the town of Wesleyan, Georgia. And the community wakes up only to discover that a statue of a Confederate general known as Henry Benning, has been dashed to the ground and splintered into a thousand pieces. This statue was causing a lot of controversy throughout the village. No one knows if someone deliberately knocked it down or if it was the storm.   Half of the town wanted it removed....and the other half including the owner of the statue and the park it was in, Old Man Griffin (Porter Griffen, age over 100) wanted it to remain due to its' historic significance. 

Now that the statue is broken, the village and its residents are laying bare all of the  tensions surrounding this controversy. 

 Marietta Cline no longer has Harry to lean on and she's slowly learning to question several of her preconceived ideas about her friends and family. Her childhood friend, Butter Swann, divorced with one young adult son named Christopher (Christo) and grandmother to Peter (who is a teen dating a teenaged black girl named Thea), has come to stay with Marietta due to her condo being flooded from the storm. Butter and Marietta have been on the "outs" since Marietta had learned Butter isn't all that she thought she was. 

Glinda, married to Marietta's brother Macon Hargis, the top defense attorney in the south, and a racist,  is also staying with Marietta and is behaving very much out of character after embarrassing Macon at the funeral reception. Macon is determined to find out who damaged the statue.  He also wants to protect the legacy of Old Man Griffen and in fact, is Porter's sole beneficiary as Porter had no known living relatives. They have two young adult children (Maggie, and Josh who lives with his girlfriend Lizzie in France and has no intention of coming back home). 

Marietta longs to fix all of these connections of people in her life but the world is changing and the divides just can't be ignored. 

Meanwhile, the little girl next door, Ivy, age 8 (and younger sister to Thea) has noticed a raven lingering around Marietta and the house. The raven leaves when Marietta leaves. What does this mean?? 

When Macon is asked to do the eulogy at Old Man Griffin's funeral at the Baptist church, more people than were expected showed up. He knows what he has to say since Glinda has given him an ultimatum.  But will he??  

 And all of a sudden........a gunshot rings out.  And the church is filled with chaos.  And a raven. 

MY THOUGHTS

This is a wonderful story.  The characters are simply endearing (most of them!) and the subject matter is important.  The character development is so well done.  I loved Gordon, Marietta, Glinda, Brady, Ernest, Ivy.....I loved all the characters really and you can just sense the drama, the mystery, the sting of betrayals, the humor, the love, the hate, the jealousy, and the fear in this story.  It's exquisitely written. 

The main themes in this book seem to be:  friendship, the marriage relationship, love, forgiveness, death, family and life in today's culture with theharsh realities of southern history  mixing with the harsh realities of the present. 

There were many quotes that jumped out at me in this story.  Some of my faves are:

"We make the most important decisions of our lives when we're least equipped to do so." (pg 67, When the Moon Turns Blue by Pamela Terry, c.2023) 

"There are some things you just don't understand until grief learns your name." (pg 165)

"What on earth do you do when you no longer like the people you love?" (pg 222)

"For as the poet said, 'Once in a while the odd thing happens, once in a while the dream comes true, and the whole pattern of life is altered, once in a while the moon turns blue.'" (pg 291)

"Maybe Gordon had been right when he told her all any of us can ever really manage is to love our crooked neighbors with our crooked hearts." (pg 301) 

In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 14 and older.

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest, I rate this a 10.