Description:

On an early spring night in 1991, Sophie and Crow, flushed with anticipation, slip away from a rowdy high school party and sneak off into the woods. Tonight, for the first time, they will make love. An hour later, Sophie lies unconscious, covered with blood, and Crow is crashing through the underbrush, hurling himself into the river to escape the police. . . .

What was meant to be an idyllic, intimate evening has turned into a nightmare. Despite Crow’s frantic claims of innocence, evidence at the scene suggests his guilt. And Sophie, by now awake in the hospital, refuses to speak, leaving the residents of the couple’s seemingly placid Tennessee town to draw their own wildly varying conclusions.
If Crow isn’t to blame, then who assaulted Sophie, and what compelled Crow to flee? With each answer comes a new set of questions. Elizabeth Cox’s vibrant and lyrical narrative revisits the events leading up to the fateful night, then shows how the tragedy reverberates throughout the community, among parents, friends, teachers, and neighbors–all connected to the young lovers, all with a stake in what happens next. As growing suspicions divide the town, a closer look reveals that everyone has something to hide.

A compelling and passionate page-turner, The Slow Moon waxes full with suspense, a haunting story of innocence lost, lives betrayed, and the courage required to face the truth.

From the Hardcover edition.

**

From Publishers Weekly

Cox's carefully wrought latest (following Familiar Ground) delineates the heartbreaking cruelty that sunders a group of adolescent friends in a small Tennessee town. During a late-night party, high school sweethearts Sophie and Crow go off into the woods. When Crow leaves Sophie for 20 minutes to fetch a condom, she's raped and beaten by a group of boys she will not be able to identify after the trauma. To the shock of the town, Crow, known to be a fine and upstanding young man, is charged with her attack. Cox painstakingly enters the consciousness of the various characters who have a stake in Crow's fate, including his diffident, religious mother, Helen, and adulterous stepfather, Carl; Crow's younger brother, Johnny, who struggles to come to terms with his homosexual attraction for Tom, one of the boys in Crow's band; the judge adjudicating Crow's case, Aurelia Bailey, who has to manage her own troubled teenage boy, Bobbie; and other teens and townsfolk. The fact of Crow's innocence is plain to all, yet no one moves to defend him, not even Sophie, who claims she can't remember what happened. Cox stands back and lets the truth emerge with quiet determination. (Aug. 8)
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–In a voice reminiscent of Alice Hoffman's, Cox weaves a story of love, sex, and scandal in a small Southern town. She deals with the issues of rape and infidelity thoughtfully and sensitively. Like people in many small towns, the folks of South Pittsburg, TN, have known one another for too long. They believe that there is nothing new to learn–until Sophie and Rita Chabot move in. Everyone at the local high school has a thing for Sophie. She is beautiful, artistic, and friendly. Rita, her newly widowed mother, is a provocative influence on both the men and their wives at the local hardware store. Change is good until the teen is brutally gang-raped after a party. And so starts a complicated tale of hidden truths, lost love, and enduring spirit. Cox's portrayal of awkward first love carries the novel beyond its dark subject matter, invoking, as does life, both grief and cheer. Told nonlinearly, the story focuses on the characters, leaving readers to try to predict who committed the vicious crime. Teens will be drawn to Sophie, her boyfriend, and the members of his band. Many will recognize, if not themselves, then people they know in real life.–Brigeen Radoicich, Fresno County Office of Education, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.