About The Book

Set around the turn of the twentieth century, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon provides a vision of the Old West unlike anything seen before. The narrator, Shed, is an orphaned half-Indian bisexual boy who lives and works at a hotel and brothel in the tiny town of Excellent, Idaho. Despite being surrounded by a loving, if eccentric, surrogate family at the hotel, Shed finds in himself a growing need to find an identity among his mother’s Indian tribe. Setting off alone across a haunting and unforgiving landscape, Shed encounters a rich pageant of extraordinary characters along the way. Although he learns a great deal about the mysteries and traditions of his Indian heritage, it is not until Shed returns to Excellent and witnesses a series of brutal tragedies that he attains the wisdom that infuses this exceptional and captivating book.

Praise

“Dazzlingly accomplished.” –The Washington Post Book World

“The miracle of the novel is that it obliges us to rethink our whole idea of narration and history and myth. . . . Spanbauer captures the music of the mind and the body.” –The New York Times Book Review

“This brave, original, ribald, funny, heartrending fable about the Old West . . . is a book as bright as it is dark, full of fictional and philosophical pleasures, a quirky, unsettling look at American history and a vision quest in the grand old tradition.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A novel that combines winningly rebellious characters who are brimming with life, along with a wise and powerful sense of the heartbreak of nineteenth-century American history.” –The Washington Post Book World

“The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon boldly creates a new voice from the Old West.” –The Oregonian

Awards

Selected by Mark Thompson as a The Good Men Project Best LGBT Books of All Time