Moon at Apogee

About the Book

At sixteen, Edward Morgan, sole heir to a Welsh fortune, has an interior life that belies his age.  A constant, but often unwilling, companion to his mentally ill mother, he spends sporadic periods attending boarding school.  Brilliant and precocious, he is obsessed with Hawaii and the Pacific islands and their culture.  He visits his dead father’s sister, Aunt Flora Morgan, every summer, roaming the country woods and fashioning them into imaginary tropical jungles.  His protected world is Ithon Lodge, his aunt’s home, and the faithful household staff who surround him.

As the story begins, Charlotte Morgan, Edward’s mother, passes away at their home in Chester, and Aunt Flora tells Edward the news of her death. Shortly after, Mr. Polly, the housekeeper’s husband, dies and his death brings up old secrets and new revelations.  Edward now awakes to a world that changes rapidly from day to day.  World War II takes

on new meaning and menace, and Ithon Lodge transforms itself into a place of strangers whose lives he has ignored over the years.  Maggie Foy, a young evacuee from Liverpool, joins the household and presents Edward with a viewpoint both diverse and challenging.  At his mother’s funeral in Wales, Edward’s instincts tell him that the Morgan clan has deeper secrets than he imagined.  He begins a search of his family background, and in doing so, finds the most compelling secret of all.

A violent death in Llandred brings Colonel Parker, the adjutant of the British Army Camp in Llandred, and his daughter, Darcy, into Edward’s life.  He sees that other families have secrets to hide and many of those secrets collide with those of the Morgan clan.  Through this all, Edward grows more wise and patient.  In self-recognition, he understands that the dream Polynesian landscape he has created stands for a search for freedom. In the woods, he tells his favorite tree goodbye. He leaves a gift and creates a God for the tree, in the Polynesian tradition. Bearing witness to suffering, death and violence in both Llandred and Liverpool, where Edward had fled to be with Maggie, empowers him.  No longer the helpfless adolescent, Edward makes an astonishing decision, fully cognizant of its implications both for himself and his family in Wales.

About the Author

Evelyn Rota was born in Liverpool, England. She earned a B.A. in English and an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from the University of California at Davis. While at Davis, she founded the Davis Consortium of Poets. In 1988 she won first prize in the Raymond Carver Short Story Competition. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Nuestro Magazine, The New Yorker, Berkeley Prize Review, University of Detroit Literary Magazine, and other publications. She lives in Sacramento, CA. Moon At Apogee is her fourth novel.