About a month ago I received an email from an author saying that he had read a review I written for another book on Amazon and asked if I would read his book and review it.  I was a little hesitant because someone sent me their book about a year ago and it was so bad I didn’t have the heart to give it a poor review.  (Or the stomach to even finish it).  But I agreed and Gary Sutton mailed me an autographed copy.  I was glad he did.  Below is the review I posted on Amazon but thought I would post it here too.

Oskaloosa Moon is powerful bittersweet tale of a deformed boy growing up in small town Iowa during the 50′s and 60′s. Author Gary Sutton superbly writes from the first-person of Moon who faces injustice after injustice at the hands of others. In fact, his writing style is so appropriate for the character, I keep asking, “Now this is a fiction, right?”. It reminds me of how Robert Morgan pens Gap Creek from the point of view of his illiterate Appalachian grandmother. Of course the setting of time in Oskaloosa Moon parallels the author’s life but the way he enters the main character’s head is touching and powerful.

Moon is not the protagonist’s real name but what he is cruelly called because his head is shaped like a crescent moon. Moon is physically deformed but gifted intellectually, solving mechanical problems and having a pure heart. (Even though he has a few vices like stealing.) Sutton’s story is most poignant when few treat Moon with kindness along the way and most painful when people treat him in inhumane ways. It’s interesting to note that the people who should be ones who treat a deformed boy with kindness – his mother, the local pastor, the town doctor, his principal – are the ones who are most cruel. It’s the ones who are also rejected by society that are not blind to the beauty of Moon’s soul – a boy with a speech impediment, blind girl and a homosexual college professor.

I as a reader was drawn not only into Moon’s story but a self-examination of perhaps ways and times I have treated others who looked or acted differently. I keep thinking of the phrase concerning young David in the Bible that “Man looks at the outward appearance but God examines the heart.”

I highly recommend Oskalaoosa Moon. It is an enjoyable read. It is a fine book simply as a novel itself but its power is in the story itself. You will laugh, cry and hopefully look at others beyond just the surface.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.