Synopsis

As a child, Noel Trudeau flees with her family from their Louisiana home in the aftermath of a heinous murder, sparked by a secret that will shadow the Trudeaus for the rest of their lives. Ten years later, on the same day that President Kennedy is assassinated, she discovers she’s pregnant, forcing her to marry her abusive boyfriend.

As the surrounding nation is divided over race, equality, and the escalating war—and her brothers leave for service in Vietnam— Noel finds a safe place to hide from her husband in the black ghetto of the steel town of Langston, Indiana, under the watchful eye of an elderly, childless couple. But her sequestered existence is threatened when Ricky Ziemny, a sensitive artist, falls in love with her. Desperate to keep her past secrets hidden from him, she’s confronted by—and irresistibly drawn to—his protective older brother, Leon, who’s engaged to be married. As the country is increasingly torn apart at the seams, so are these two families. And when Noel’s long-kept secrets are about to unravel, she questions what it really means to love.

Set in the soul-searing 1960s when the quest for love as the supreme panacea is stilled by assassins’ bullets, The Moonstoners captures the emotional complexities of families and relationships from the diverse perspectives of five interconnected lives.