Coming September 9, 2025 from Delphinium Books
Set just before the AIDS crisis, at the height of the punk rock era, Starlight & Moonshine is a story of family relationships, grief, love, sex, booze, and Detroit in 1980. In the middle of a late March snowfall, Hannah Fallon drunkenly crashes into a tree and out of her family's life. Told in retrograde beginning a year out from Hannah's death through the family members' varying viewpoints, Starlight & Moonshine explores the humor, love, and rancor of a family grappling to keep their tight-knit bonds from unraveling.
★ In O’Malley’s brilliant debut, a wife and mother’s death after driving drunk shatters her family’s placid surface in 1980 Detroit, laying bare their personality ticks and the rifts that formed over their lifetimes.
O’Malley toggles between the perspectives of each family member, shining light on what they know about one another and themselves while also illuminating their blind spots. It’s an exemplary domestic drama.
-- Publisher's Weekly (starred)
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“Grief manifests itself in unique ways throughout this sharp novel. … A testament to the power of the tableau.” —Kirkus Reviews
"Joseph O’Malley’s Starlight and Moonshine is a poignant panorama of the way grief devastates and changes an entire family, separately and together. With evocative prose and astute psychological insights, O’Malley offers a compelling story and characters that will stay with you long after the final page."
—Jessica Treadway, author of Infinite Dimensions
“A kaleidoscopic portrait of a family perpetually on the verge of disintegration, Starlight and Moonshine is as unflinching as it is tender in its quietly radical vision of love, loss, and the secrets we all keep. O’Malley’s characters are so persuasively alive, they will follow you out of the novel, lingering in your heart and mind long after the final page.” —Antoine Wilson, author of Mouth to Mouth