The Moonstoners — Barbara J. Dzikowski

“When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.”     -- Blaise Pascal

Noël Trudeau calls them moonstoners. The ones born under a restless moon during unsettling times, the ones who become the dreamers, the discontents, the seekers of a newer world. The ones who love too much. And in the 1960s, an inordinate number of moonstoners come of age in one big blast that nearly, but not quite, changes the world.

As a child, Noël flees with her family from their Louisiana home in the aftermath of a heinous murder, sparked by a secret that will shadow the Trudeaus for the rest of their lives. Ten years later, on the same day that President Kennedy is assassinated, she discovers she's pregnant by date rape, forcing her to marry her abusive boyfriend.

As the surrounding nation is divided over race, equality, and the escalating war -- and her brothers leave for service in Vietnam -- Noël finds a safe place to hide from her husband in the black ghetto of the steel town of Langston, Indiana, under the watchful eye of an elderly, childless couple. But her sequestered existence is threatened when Ricky Ziemny, a sensitive artist, falls in love with her. Desperate to keep her past secrets hidden from him, she's confronted by -- and irresistibly drawn to -- his protective older brother, Leon, who's engaged to be married. As the country is increasingly torn apart at the seams, so are these two families. And when Noël's long-kept secrets are about to unravel, she questions what it really means to love.

Set in the soul-searing 1960s when the quest for love as the supreme panacea is stilled by assassins' bullets, The Moonstoners captures the emotional complexities of families and relationships, grief and loss, hopes and dreams, from the diverse perspectives of five interconnected lives. It is a journey into the heartbreaking, life-changing choices we make when we love too much -- and the human spirit's ultimate faith that love will have the last word.