Praise
The Vanishing Moon is the lyrical account of the Tollman family’s demise, but it is so beautifully crafted that one keeps turning the pages rapidly; that is, when one isn’t stopping to ponder its poignantly poetic phrases and sentences depicting the scenery and dynamic characters.
Coulson balances the heartbreak of reality with scenes of unearthly beauty, the tenderness and passion of first love and the impulsive yearning of young men for a world that has a place for them. The fully-fleshed characters serve to remind us that the stories of our ancestors may be obscured by time, but are no less relevant today.
The Vanishing Moon … explores human frailty with the simplicity and directness of haiku...at times achieves the quiet beauty of William Maxwell's finest work—generous, episodic, elegiac but not sentimental...Coulson seems to want to bring Faulkner to Ohio.