Moon's crossing

by Barbara Croft

The dreamer, Jim Moon, provides the common thread to *Moon's Crossing*. Moon fought in the Civil War, traveled across the West, married a much younger woman and tried his hand at farming and being a father, left for the White City and ended up jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge in despair. Croft weaves these strands to create the complex image of Moon, who names his only son, Winslow, after an artist, who is lured to the White City by the promise of beauty only to have his vision destroyed, who takes under his wing a young orphan girl with a garnet pin, and who sends to his son, whom he had abandoned in infancy, a tombstone shaped like a tree of life. A shorter version of this work was awarded the Faulkner Medal in 2000.