Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars by Daniel Wallace

Description

In the dazzling flash fictions of Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars, lives are altered in what appear to be minor moments: an unlatched lock, an old photo, a light left on too long. But in the care of acclaimed novelist Daniel Wallace, those details constellate into something mysterious and magical. The drifter who is mistaken for a movie star, an old woman who sits on the roof of her house to smoke her secret cigarette, a man building a coffin for his wife—the men and women in these stories, hungry for connection, often find that everything hangs on a gust of wind or a single word. Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars tenderly navigates the shadows, inviting readers to take comfort. There’s plenty of light left.

“Daniel Wallace’s Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars—fables? allegories? short-short stories? —offers everything I want: characters consumed with longing, of uncomfortable situations, of regrets and (often wrong-headed) solutions. These stories, I believe, encapsulate every worthwhile human yearning: to be loved and understood, to understand and love meaningfully.”—George Singleton, author of The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs

“Reading these stories feels like a shock, as if somebody had flung open a door and suddenly you are standing, blinking, at the very edge of absolute truth and it is dazzling in its beauty and at the same time wonderfully ordinary, it has been right there in front of you all along but only Daniel Wallace could make it visible.”—Mesha Maren, author of Shae

“I’m always happy to be back in Daniel Wallace country—lovers, haters and coffin makers in stories that were eerily familiar until a revelation knocked me sideways. In very few pages, self-deception grappled with longing, monsters turned out to be frail. Few writers can make the everyday sing. Wallace goes one further: he makes it surprising.”—Rosecrans Baldwin, author of Everything Now

Daniel Wallace

Daniel Wallace is the author of six novels, including Big Fish, his first, published in 1998, and Extraordinary Adventures, in 2017. In 2003 Big Fish was adapted and released as a movie by Tim Burton and then in 2013 a Broadway musical directed by Susan Stroheim. His novels and stories have been translated into many languages. His children’s book, for which he did both the words and the pictures, is called The Cat’s Pajamas, and it is absolutely adorable. His most recent book, a memoir entitled This Isn’t Going to End Well, was published by Algonquin books in April 2023. He is the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater, where he lives with Laura, his wife.