Book Blurb: Shoot the Moon

Shoot the Moon
by Billie Letts
(c) 2004
Grand Central Publishing
368p

From one of America's best-loved storytellers - the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller WHERE THE HEART IS - comes her latest national bestseller, a tale of a small Oklahoma town and the mystery that has haunted its residents for years.

In 1972, windswept DeClare, Oklahoma, was consumed by the murder of a young mother, Gaylene Harjo, and the disappearance of her baby, Nicky Jack. When the child's pajama bottoms were discovered on the banks of Willow Creek, everyone feared that he, too, had been killed, although his body was never found.

Nearly thirty years later, Nicky Jack mysteriously returns to DeClare, shocking the town and stirring up long-buried memories. But what he discovers about the night he vanished is more astonishing than he or anyone could have imagine. Piece by piece, what emerges is a story of dashed hopes, desperate love, and a secret that still cries out for justice...and redemption.

I am excited about this one because I absolutely loved Where the Heart Is. That novel had all my favorite elements in a story: quirky or eccentric characters; surprise twists in the story always generated out of the character of the characters: the whole gamut of emotions from laughter to tears to outrage; characters who are irresistible, for whom my heart goes out to as completely as to one of my own family members; and communities with their own eccentricities and struggles against their darker instincts which are transcended by an enlarging of the heart. All of this I have high hopes of encountering in Shoot the Moon.

In an interview about the writing of Shoot the Moon, Letts said, "My greatest hope is that my stories might lead readers to greater acceptance, tolerance, and compassion for one another." This is one of my own hopes for my own stories so it is no wonder that I am drawn to Letts' stories.