A Short Review of Silver Moon, by Catherinen Lundoff

Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Becca Thornton is turning fifty and the face that stares back at her from her mirror looks “perfectly ordinary. It was a face like that of any other woman of a certain age in a one-horse town like Wolf’s Point” (1). The hot flashes have started; she is beginning menopause and she’s divorced. Her husband has traded her in for a “twenty-something blonde bimbo and a sports car.” And she works in a hardware store. Perfectly ordinary. Or is she? Along with the first hot flash, “suddenly and unexpectedly, superheating Becca Thornton’s body from head to toe,” there was “something new in her reflection, a flickering of golden eyes and fur, visible for the blink of an eye. Something feral and wild . . .” (1). Something feral and wild indeed.

Becca Thornton is becoming a werewolf—something of a surprise, to say the least. The old, old magic that persists in this town has found her, as it has other women of “a certain age” in Wolf’s Point. To say her life will be completely changed probably qualifies as one of the understatements of the year.

So begins the debut novel of award-winning author, Catherine Lundoff. This tale is one of the supernatural, and the magical, and the human—how does a fifty-year-old woman negotiate such a transformation, literally, when she becomes a wolf amongst the other women of the Club, and metaphorically, as she crosses a certain boundary that all women must cross, into maturity, into a somewhat different imagining of self. But this well-told, and often funny, tale is about more than werewolves. It is a coming out story and a love story, as Becca finds herself attracted to her neighbor, Erin, she of the “slow, lazy smile.”

Ultimately, Silver Moon is a story about identity. Becca has been asking herself who is she? Not Ed’s wife, anymore? No longer young? Attracted to women—not to men, the way things are supposed to be? Add to all that being a werewolf and all that means, including a newly powerful sense of smell, which clues her in on such things as people just smelling wrong.

It’s a lot to handle for a gal.

Oh, yes, Becca has to learn about being a hero, too. It turns out things in Wolf’s Point aren’t so placid and small-town-y as one might think. Annie, a former Club menber, is the leader of the Slayer’s Nest, a paramilitary group that want to do away with werewolves by curing them of this disease that is “disgusting and wrong.” Annie, it seems, is motivated by revenge, blaming the Club for the death of her parents, and she is motivated by a mistaken desire to rid the world of evil. When Annie and her Nesters come into direct conflict with the Club, things get interesting—and dangerous—for Becca, Erin, and the other women. Things become a matter of survival—and life and death.

In Lundoff’s skilled hands both the familiar coming out story and the story of falling in love, becomes a sometimes dark, sometimes light, fantasy of good vs. evil, of werewolves who know themselves fighting those who can’t accept themselves. That the werewolves are middle-aged menopausal women, and not the proverbial beautiful young heroines, is one of the novel’s strengths. The beauty and grace of maturity are recognized for what it is. As a young woman deputy tells Becca, “To be one of the guardian grandmothers, to protect the land and the people. It’s a great honor, you know. Not many are called” (33).

The element of mystery also adds to the novel’s strength as well. Annie, the leader of the Nesters, says she is motivated by revenge, but is that it? How did she convince this strange Dr. Anderson to come up with a cure? Where is the money to build a secret lab in the woods coming from? Does Annie’s fear and hatred of werewolves have something else behind it? The language she uses, disgusting, wrong, a disease, is clearly parallel to the language used in anti-gay rhetoric. Some might argue that Lundoff is inserting a little social commentary here. Maybe so. Silver Moon is a novel about self-acceptance, with Becca the focus of this interior conflict. It is also about acceptance of others—and here is a place, Wolf’s Point, where maturity as well as youth is celebrated, men and women are both strong, and who you love is your business. But this is not utopia. Not everybody agrees. Things do get messy and dangerous. The course of true love doesn’t run smooth.

After all, Silver Moon is a novel about human beings, with all their ambiguities and frailties and weaknesses and strengths, loves and hates, some of whom happen to be werewolves.

Clearly there is more story to be told.

Recommended.



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