The Moon Over Lake Elmo [Paperback]

Steve Thayer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2001

Steve Thayer has been hailed as "an author who's not afraid to take chances" by The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Now the man behind such bestsellers as The Weatherman presents a work of quiet power and personal triumph. It is the story of Angela, a nine-year-old who can hear the gunshots and see the firelight of the L.A. riots through her bedroom window-and her father Steve, who sees a pair of bright-red cardinals in the brilliant Minnesota snow through his own window a world away. The relationship between the two-and the difficult process of repairing it-are the subject of this tale of separation and sacrifice, regret and reunion-a story that will resonate with anyone who has watched a family break apart, and hoped against hope for the best.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bestselling thriller writer Thayer changes gears this time out with a semi-autobiographical novel about three generations of one family. If there is an undertone of therapeutic exercise in this book, it is because that is how the novel came about. As the author explains in an epilogue a letter to Thayer's deceased father he was told to write a letter to his dead father to help overcome a bout of depression. Instead, Thayer wrote from his home in Lake Elmo, Minn., to a fictional, biracial daughter named Angela who "began writing back" from Los Angeles. Along with his letters and Angela's diary entries, Thayer spliced in edited excerpts from his father's diary; the compiled assemblage forms the book. While there is a fair amount of dialogue and plot development in the various missives, the author is hemmed in by the format. Letters and diaries do not allow for the kind of rich narrative and vivid character interactions that we have come to expect from Thayer, who in earlier works has shown himself to be an accomplished storyteller. The contrivance of the format keeps the characters and their viewpoints separate, resulting in an overall flatness to the unfolding story about a man who scarcely knew his father and abandoned his daughter. Occasional scenes involving the daughter's abusive grandmother and a chilling description of sickle cell anemia, which killed Angela's mother, are well constructed. Thayer does a decent job of capturing three distinct voices here the innocence of one who fought in WWII as he tries to understand the dissolution of his marriage; the tribulations of a baby boomer who has lost the love of his life; and an interracial pre-adolescent searching for her identity but one longs for a more compelling and thorough examination of their lives.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: NAL Trade (July 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451203739
• ISBN-13: 978-0451203731
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Family healing, January 10, 2002

By 

C. Anderson "oldnouseco" (Covina, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Moon Over Lake Elmo (Paperback)

This little book is an artfully constructed account of family healing with three voices. A grandfther's diary, a father's letters and his young daughter's diary bring together a story of love and reconnection. This is a quick read and worth the time spent.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Something to think about!, January 1, 2004

By 

Margaret Shaw (Nassau Community College, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Moon Over Lake Elmo (Paperback)

The diary style used in this book is not new. Other good books have been diaries and the relationship between the three main characters gives the reader something to think about. Several reviewers mentioned problems with the shift in times and characters but that is the way real life is. We all experience memories and thoughts of the future while experiencing the present. Steve Thayer helps the reader out by using different fonts for each character. This is a short novel that weaves the stories of three lives and how they intertwine. It also raises issues that are of importance. It is hard to tell a good story in 150 pages, but this author does it. As for missing details, I feel that is for the reader to fill in. A willingness to create a relationship with this novel rather than to simply read the words is a key part of the experience. The author invites the reader to think and connect the dots. I liked that!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Moon Over Lake Elmo..., April 24, 2002

By 

Rafael Torrealba (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Moon Over Lake Elmo (Paperback)

Moon Over Lake Elmo is a novel that you have to read very carefully to fully appreciate it's contents. The book is not written in a sequence of events or narrated, it is composed of letters written from the main character to his daughter and of journal entries varying in dates from the 1950's to the 1990's. I think Steve Thayer does a good job of portraying an American family and all the problems they go through in fairly good detail. Millions of Americans come from broken homes as divorce is no longer as uncommon as it was in past times, so many readers can relate to these types of problems with relative ease. The fact that the book is written out of journal entries & letters gives the reader a very personal insight into what someone might go through in such a situation. It is a good read, in my opinion, and I would reccomend it.