When the Moon Turns Blue
A Novel
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4.3 • 22 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
One woman fights to hold on to her friends, her family, and all that she holds dear as a brewing conflict divides her small-town Georgia community in this powerful novel from the author of The Sweet Taste of Muscadines.
“This book is a treasure. Pamela Terry writes with a poet’s ear and a wicked sense of comic timing.”—Nationally bestselling author Barbara O’Neal
On the morning after Harry Cline’s funeral, a rare ice storm hits the town of Wesleyan, Georgia. The community wakes up to find its controversial statue of Confederate general Henry Benning destroyed—and not by the weather. Half the town had wanted to remove the statue; the other half had wanted to preserve it. Now that the matter has been taken out of their hands, the town’s long-simmering tensions are laid bare.
Without Harry beside her, Marietta is left to question many of her preconceived ideas about her friends and family. Her childhood friend, Butter, has come to her aid in ways Marietta never expected or asked for. Her sister-in-law, Glinda, is behaving completely out of character, and her brother, Macon, the top defense attorney in the Southeast, is determined to find those responsible for the damage to the statue and protect the legacy of Old Man Griffin, the owner of the park where it once stood. Marietta longs to salvage these connections, but the world is changing and the divides can no longer be ignored.
With a cast of compassionate, relatable characters, When the Moon Turns Blue is a poignant and timely novel about family, friendship, and what can happen when we discover that we don’t particularly like the people we love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Terry (The Sweet Taste of Muscadines) returns to Wesleyan, Ga., for this uneven sophomore outing about racism, white guilt, and Confederate statues. Friends Marietta Cline and Butter Swan, both in their 60s, reunite at Marietta's husband's funeral after three years of estrangement that began when Marietta, daughter of white liberal newspaperman Logan Hargis, heard a racist comment from Butter and called her "crass." At the funeral luncheon, Marietta's sister-in-law, Glinda, publicly humiliates her husband, Marietta's older brother Macon, after hearing enough of him pontificate over the right of his client to keep a Confederate monument erected in a park on land he owns. After someone pulls down the statue, the police investigate, and a shocking act of violence forces Marietta to confront her strained relationship with Macon and assess how her liberal politics have impacted her personal life. Terry is strongest when illuminating the ties among Marietta, Butter, Glinda, and Macon, but incorporating a Confederate statue controversy as a plot device to solve the white characters' problems comes across as tone-deaf, especially given the lack of Black characters in the book. Readers might want to take a pass.
Customer Reviews
A Great Book Club Pick!
From funerals to ice storms to controversial statue debate and vandalism, this book covers what it’s like to live in a small town of Georgia that experiences grief, love, loss, difficult relationships, racial issues and how it can affect friendships, family, and marriages.
I loved how each chapter was written from different perspectives as this gave depth to the story and showed that each character had their own struggles in life, but came out stronger in the end. This character driven book captures the dynamics of complex relationship when the community is divided over removing a controversial confederate statue.
It was a hard book to put down and It’s a story that leaves you thinking about it long after it’s done. This one will be great for book clubs as there is so much to discuss!
Great!
What a great book! Loved the characters, the storyline and the writing. Well done Ms. Terry!
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
When a loved one passes, people are filled with a myriad of emotions. When Harry Cline passed away, the whole town felt the loss because Harry took the time to invest his life in the lives of others and none more so than his wife, Marietta. Marietta finds herself close to being overwhelmed with her grief. A freak snowstorm turns her home into a port in the storm for an unlikely group of people who have known each other since they were children but most of whose relationships have become estranged. Then there is the odd entanglement of Marietta’s sister-in-law who has come to escape her husband, the big, bad, overbearing lawyer who is used to
getting his way about everything. The town is at a crossroads over a Civil War era astatue that represents life as it once was but now is a major point of contention and Marietta’s brother is smack dab in the middle of it!
What I like about this book is how this group of old friends rallies around Marietta in her time of grief. They each have something unique to offer her to help her cope. During the tension-filled parts when the town is going against Marietta’s brother, they still support her yet give her room to do what she thinks is best. This is a great story dealing with friends and family-the good, the bad, and all the stuff in the middle! In this case, “the stuff in the middle” is quite entertaining!
I was provided a complimentary copy of this book by Random House & NetGalley. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own and without influence.