Consider, for a moment, the people around you. How would you look — who would you be — if your soul and character existed only through their eyes? In poet Joseph Coulson’s debut novel, The Vanishing Moon (Archipelago) this is the way we meet Phil Tollman — through a younger brother, an abandoned lover, and a teenage son. The Phil Tollman we see is at times adoring, brave, disillusioned, drunken, and belligerent; a melancholy figure defined by the choices he makes — and those he leaves unmade. With finely crafted characters and scenery, Coulson’s epic depicts the working-class world of Cleveland and Detroit, following the Tollman family from the Great Depression through World War II to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The graceful prose tenderly builds a story of humanity and tragedy. In the Tollman’s world, reality can be as dark as a moonless sky, lit only by memories and dreams unrealized.