Full Moon Over America (Originally Published by Warner Books September 1994) Thomas William Simpson, the acclaimed author of This Way Madness Lies and The Gypsy Storyteller, extends his literary powers, spinning an uproarious and disturbing tale about a place called America, and all the fools, dreamers, villains, and heroes who have made it possible. It's dawn in America. At least it's dawn in the Blue Mountains, where the nation's eyes have turned. Because on this day, January 20, 2001, Inauguration Day, a man who is spectacularly unqualified to be President-a man just thirty-three years old, who wants his mother to be his Vice President, who has never held a job, and has no apparent political views at all-is about to be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. Several problems, however, block William Conrad Brant MacKenzie's entrance to the Oval Office. First, the rumor mill is flooded with talk Willy may well be insane, or at least emotionally unstable. Second, the Supreme Court has refused to recognize his election because of his age. And third, even if Willy is inaugurated, he may have a difficult time presiding over the nation. As the twenty-first century dawns, the United States is in a rapid state of political, social, and moral decline. So how did Willy MacKenzie, scion of one of America's wealthiest and most eccentric families, get elected in the first place? To discover the answer to this puzzling question, renegade Gonzo journalist Mr. Jack Steel, Willy's own Mephistopheles, takes us on a journey through 20th century America. We meet Willy's great grandfather, Ulysses S. Grant MacKenzie; his reclusive, war hero father; his mother, a strong, magical woman of Iroquois ancestry; and Dawn, the great and enduring love of Willy's life. Skillfully and cunningly, Steel weaves a story of a nation in transition, of war and peace, of political skullduggery and environmental disaster, of generational struggles crowded with ambition, corruption, and lost innocence. As the journalist speaks, and more than one hundred years of American history flash by, the suspense mounts around Willy's Inauguration. Will he take the oath of office? Is he qualified to take the oath? Or is Willy merely a pawn in a grand and sinister scheme? This is Thomas William Simpson's most outlandish work to date. Prepare to be thrown into a crazed and surreal world, almost hallucinatory in scope. Full Moon Over America is all at once an amusing, troubling, and all together unconventional novel about love and trust and power and family and the God-given right of every individual to live life as he or she sees fit. Like all of Simpson's novels, Full Moon Over America is rich in its language, accessible in its plot, and driven by the dreams and obsessions of its unconventional characters. A truly distinctive and original American work of fiction.
About the Author: Full Moon Over America was my third published novel with Warner Books. Warner paid me handsomely because of The Gypsy Storyteller and This Way Madness Lies. Those novels had sold well and been enthusiastically received by reviewers. I received lots of advice on what I should write next. Of course, I didn't listen because I've never been good at listening to reasonable, conservative people who usually know more than I do. It is my Achilles' heel. But also it is the quality that has allowed me live an irregular life and write a unique and diverse bunch of novels. Full Moon Over America was the beginning of the end of my commercial career. My editor, the lovely and brilliant Ms. Jamie Raab, had no idea what to make of the novel. It was difficult to summarize or categorize. Describing the story in a few sentences, a requirement for attention deficient Americans, was impossible. Likely it was doomed from its conception. I'm amazed Larry Kirshbaum and Jamie Raab and others at Warner approved the novel's publication. For that support, despite the book being a commercial dud, I will always be grateful. Why? Because I think Full Moon is my most creative and imaginative novel to date. Full Moon Over America is intensely political in its point of view, and politics has never been an easy sell to the American fiction reading public. I am offering the book for sale here in the hope of a second coming. As I said, Warner did not know how to market the book and so they slipped and the novel fell through the cracks. Now, with Trump in the White House, perhaps the critics will see just how visionary Full Moon Over America really was. I was raised in a very political household. Dad was conservative, Mom moderate in her political views. I came of age during the Vietnam War and the college protests and the Watergate hearings. I remember watching those hearings on TV one summer while sick in bed with mononucleosis. I can still hear the lies and deceits well told. My cynicism and disillusionment in our political system had real and, I think, justifiable roots. It was, at least in part, this cynicism and disillusionment that led to the writing of Full Moon Over America. For those who lived through that time, the novel will be an interesting refresher. For those who came along later, Full Moon will hopefully be a revelation. Full Moon is everything great fiction should be-entertaining, daring, demanding, inventive, eccentric, and reflective.