Clair De Lune (31 page)

Jetta Carleton was herself such daring soul, moving from Missouri to New York, where she worked as a television advertising copywriter. Creating Allen Liles from a distance of more than fifty years, she is able to dramatize the dilemma her character faces with a light touch, bring her characters to life in a sentence or two, and portray each of them with a clear-eyed compassion born of experiencing much more than dreams. Jetta's philosophy is Epicurean, finding the highest virtue in happiness and friendship. How rare it is for a novel to celebrate “the chosen landscape of the soul,” the enchantment of moonlit spring evenings, and the importance of good old-fashioned fun.

Since Jetta's novel was still a work in progress when she died, Joan Daw and her agent, Denise Shannon, asked me to edit the manuscript, to address some inconsistencies of sequence and characterization, and to clarify a few phrases likely to perplex a twenty-first-century reader. I have used my lightest editorial touch and done my best to honor what I believe were Jetta Carleton's intentions.

I expect
Clair de Lune,
like
The Moonflower Vine,
will meet with enduring success, especially among young readers. It is, at its heart, a novel that encourages idealismâa quality, as Jetta Carleton says of innocence, that seems in short supply these days.

Ann Patty

October 2011

“Jetta's philosophy is Epicurean, finding the highest virtue in happiness and friendship.”

Read On

The Moonflower Vine
: A Neglected Book

The following is Brad Bigelow's review of The Moonflower Vine. The review appeared on NeglectedBooks.com, December 23, 2006.

I
READ
T
HE
M
OONFLOWER
V
INE
after coming across Jane Smiley's discussion of it in her
13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.
It wasn't so much what Smiley had to say about it as that it was essentially the only genuinely little-known novel she saw fit to include in her list of one hundred great novels. In there amongst
Wuthering Heights, Moby-Dick,
and
Ulysses
was this book with a completely unfamiliar title and by a completely unfamiliar author. To see a neglected book rate such high-profile coverage alone made it worth a try.

I can't say that
The Moonflower Vine
would have stood much chance of a second look from me had it not come with such a sterling recommendation. Its marketing, back when it was picked as a Literary Guild selection and condensed in a Reader's Digest edition, was definitely aimed at a feminine audience, and its first paperback edition featured a small picture of a big, strong, dark-haired man embracing a delicate young womanâthe sort of image that's become the clichÃ© of gauzy romantic novels.

“Its marketing, back when it was picked as a Literary Guild selection and condensed in a Reader's Digest edition, was definitely aimed at a feminine audience.”

As Bo Diddley sang, though, you can't judge a book by looking at the cover. There's barely a lick of romance in the whole of
The Moonflower Vine.
Carleton grew up on a Missouri farm perhaps not too unlike that described in her novel, and no farm family that survives a hard winter or a bad harvest has much romanticism left in its veins. The pragmatism of farm life is multiplied by the stern morality of the Midwest Methodist, with its clear-cut sense of right and wrong (and none of the Southern Baptist's taste for a little melodramatic backsliding).

The Moonflower Vine
is a multidimensional tale of the lives of Matthew Soames; his wife, Callie; and their four daughters, Jessica, Leonie, Mathy, and Mary Jo. Mary Jo is probably closest in profile to Carleton herself. The youngest of the girls, she is roughly the same age as Carleton and, like her, left rural Missouri for a career in the world of television in New York. She narrates the introductory section of the book, which takes place one summer Sunday when the daughters (with the exception of Mathy, who dies before the age of twenty) have come back to the family farm for a visit. This section is gentle, lightly comic, and bucolic in its description of rustic pleasures such as skinny-dipping in the creek.

“Carleton grew up on a Missouri farm perhaps not too unlike that described in her novel, and no farm family that survives a hard winter or a bad harvest has much romanticism left in its veins.”

The rest of the book, however, is related in the third person. Starting with Jessica, it deals in turn with each of the other members of the familyâMatthew, who struggles throughout his career as a teacher and principal of a small-town school with a lust for bright young women in his classes; Mathy, the family rebel, who elopes with a barnstorming pilot; Leonie, the dutiful daughter, who never quite manages to find her right place in the world; and finally, Callie, the mother, whose brief moment of adultery mirrors her husband's own private sin.

Sin is a constant presence in the book. Everyone in the family, with the possible exception of Mary Jo, commits one or more sins, in their own eyes or those of the community, that prevents any form of love expressed in the book from being completely unequivocal. Matthew never fully forgives Mathy for quitting school and running off with one of the local renegades, nor Jessica for marrying a drifter Matthew takes on briefly as a hired hand. The Soameses are a God-fearing family, stalwart members of the Methodist Church, very much Old Testament Christians.

“Sin is a constant presence in the book.”

At the same time, though, progress makes its own changes in their lives. While Matthew and Callie refuse to install indoor plumbing, planes, trains, and automobiles all bring the outside world a little closer to their doorstep. Jessica and her new groom catch a train for his family home in southern Missouriâgenuine hillbilly countryâand though he dies less than a year later, she remains with his people thereafter. Ed, one of Matthew's old students, returns to town with an old biplane and proceeds to sweep daughter Mathy off her feet, only to kill her a year or two afterward in a crash landing. Sometime later, Leonie takes a trip to Kansas City, meets a somewhat reformed Ed, and eventually decides to marry him.

Though
The Moonflower Vine
is full of lush descriptions of the trees, birds, flowers, and plants that fill the Soameses' world, it's very much a Midwestern, rather than Southern, novel. The comedy and tragedy are always moderated with a spare sense of realism. Missouri is, after all, the “Show Me” stateâskepticism prevents any of the characters from leaping headlong into any of their passions for more than a moment or two. Or, rather, it makes them look before leaping, if leap they do.

As the reviews of
The Moonflower Vine
on Amazon.com demonstrate, this novel, though long out of print, continues to hold a fond place in the hearts of readers who've discovered it.

“Missouri is, after all, the âShow Me' stateâskepticism prevents any of the characters from leaping headlong into any of their passions for more than a moment or two.”

Brad Bigelow edits and maintains the Neglected Books Page (www.neglectedbooks.com), which features reviews, articles, and dozens of lists of fine but forgotten books and authors. He also edits the Space Age Pop Music Page (www.spaceagepop.com), which pays attention to music most people prefer to ignore. After serving with the U.S. Air Force for twenty-five years, he now works for NATO and lives outside Brussels, Belgium.

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Other Works

A
LSO BY
J
ETTA
C
ARLETON

The Moonflower Vine

Credit

Designed by Michael P. Correy

HARPER
PERENNIAL

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

P.S.â¢ is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

CLAIR DE LUNE
. Copyright Â© 2012 by Jetta Carleton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-208919-9

EPub Edition Â© FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062089182

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RRD
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