The main goal was to find some athletic shoes for my husband at Fred Toenges. As you enter the store, you take a number and await your turn. We were there almost an hour, 30 minutes of waiting and 30 minutes of service. Luckily I had my ipad with me since we were going to Half Price Books on this trip. I wasn't planning to read any books this week, but I selected I'll Watch the Moon by Ann Tatlock so I would have something to do during the wait. This was my first time to read a novel by this author.
Though there were a few light moments in the narration, the book really had a somber feel about it. The thread running through the story was about suffering and loss and how they fit into God's plan and will. Parts of it brought me to tears (thankfully when I was home again, not in the shoe store).
Nova Tierney, the voice of the narration thru most of the book, lives with her mother Catherine and brother Dewey in Minnesota helping to run a boarding house where they also reside. Nine-year-old Nova's greatest wish is that her mother would marry and thus Nova would have a father again. Her father has been dead for 4 years.
The year is 1948. Folks depend on streetcars and trains, TV is a novelty in neighborhoods, and two of the boarders are retired vaudeville entertainers. The characters reflect back on the war, fear the Communists, and see how the scourge of polio effects their neighbors. Then Dewey contracts the disease.
As the book progresses we learn the backstory of Catherine, the suffering she has endured through childhood and into adulthood. She projects sadness and is a worrier. One of her worries comes true when fourteen-year-old Dewey becomes ill.
Dewey ends up in an iron lung in the hospital. He loved astronomy and his aspiration was to one day walk on the moon. Because all he can see in the hospital is the ceiling, Nova promises him that she will watch the moon for him every night.
We learn the story of Josef, one of the boarders, who Catherine comes to trust and to confide in. Polish Josef is starting a new life in the United States as a linguistics professor at a nearby college. He shares little about himself, but it comes out that he spent time in a Nazi concentration camp and that all of his family was killed by the Germans. Nova starts to think of Josef as a possible father figure.
There is an unexpected sad twist in the story. Though most of the characters find some happiness and faith is kindled or strengthened by the end of the book, it is a stark look at the realities of human life on a fallen sin-filled earth. There is some resolution, but I would not call it a feel-good book. The writing and character development are excellent, but you will experience heart ache.
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