Dancing at the Harvest Moon
By K.C. McKinnon
Fiction
Review posted: 7/20/03
Everyone has a memory of the past that they cherish. In Dancing at the
Harvest Moon McKinnon taks the theme of lost love and spins a tale
of what might have been.
She does it well, and her words are lyrical and as warm and comforting
as a fire on a cold fall night. No one knows better than Maggie, the
novels main character, that things change and people change. She's
reached an uncertain middle age. Her husband is living the cliche, and
and has left her for his secretary. Rather than letting the changes
defeat her, however, Maggie decides to take advantage of the changes
to find out what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
When she's going through the boxes in her parents attic she finds letters
from her summer sweetheart. She lost touch with him over the years, and
the letters remind her of her lost love and the wonderful summers they
spent together. She makes up her mind to go back to Little Bear Lake
and see if she can find the girl she was in those long ago summers.
Maddie finds the town little changed. The place she worked over those
summers has closed, and she buys it. As she rejuvenates the Harvest Moon
she finds herself rejuvenated as well. She finds herself able to lay
the past to rest. She also comes to understand why her marriage fell
apart. She begins to grow and change and as she does she finds new loves,
old friends and a new sense of self.
McKinnon has combined several traditional themes - mid-life crisis,
lost love, and unhappy marriage to create a new story. Dancing
at the Harvest Moon is a coming of age story for a new age. Maggie
comes to middle age with a struggle, but acedes with grace and at last
finds peace.
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