The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is an American epic of the old West for our own times -- a novel huge in its imaginative scope and daring in its themes. The narrator is Shed, or Duivichi-un-Dua, a half-breed bisexual boy who makes his living at the Indian Head Hotel in the little turn-of-the-century town of Excellent, Idaho. The imperious Ida Richilieu is Shed's employer, the town's mayor, and the mistress and owner of this outrageously pink whorehouse. Together with the beautiful prostitute Alma Hatch, and the philosophical, green-eyed, half-crazy cowboy Dellwood Barker, this collection of misfits and outcasts make up the core of Shed's eccentric family. Although laced with the ugliness and cruelty of the frontier West -- Shed is raped by the same man who then murders the woman he thinks is his mother, and the Mormon townspeople bring a fiery end to Ida's raucous way of life -- the love and acceptance that tie this family together provide the true heart of this novel. The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a beautifully told mythic tale that is also a profound meditation on sexuality, race, and man's relationship to himself and the natural world.

“The miracle of this novel it that it obliges us to rethink our whole idea of narration and history and myth. Tom Spanbauer's wild West is the hurly-burly of the mind. He takes us into territories where few of us would ever dare to go.”

– New York Times Book Review

“Haunting and earthy, this deeply felt tale of love and loss… Spanbauer fuses raunchy dialogue, pathos, local color, heartbreak and a serious investigation of racism in this stunning narrative.”

– Publishers Weekly

“Gender and racial lines are bent out of shape in this tale of turn-of-the-century Idaho spun by a youth who is part Indian, not quite wholly homosexual, and in the grip of a powerful imagination. Spanbauer creates a pansexual West that John Wayne wouldn't have recognized.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“A visceral, sprawling tragic-comedy…The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is equal parts bizarre Bildungsroman, raucous picaresque, and hard-driving wild-West yarn.”

–New York magazine

“A masterful plot… Delightfully unpredictable and compelling.”

–Library Journal

“Every once in a while a reviewer comes across a book that seems so startlingly original and true that it redeems everything: art, life, the human spirit, a reviewer’s job… Tom Spanbauer’s novel The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is such a book.”

– Willamette Week