Two Moons

“Thomas Mallon [is] one of our finer novelists writing about politics (especially those of the 19th century). . . . The arena in which Mallon does his darkest, most gripping work is not that of the solar system but of Washington’s spoils system . . . Mallon rewards the reader with wicked humor and deep insight. . . . This is a novel that abounds in rewards.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Mallon has a fabulous eye for the people at the edge of the historical picture. In Two Moons he brings together a prodigious amount of well-researched period detail and an imaginative deployment of authentic characters. . . . The poisonous Washington atmosphere of hateful Reconstruction politics, tinged by the specter of malaria, practically seeps from the pages of the book. . . . Two Moons is a novel about a quaint kind of homegrown ambition and optimism that is uniquely American. You could call Thomas Mallon either a dreamy scholar or a scholarly dreamer. Either way, his fiction is as lucent as moonlight.”
—The Washington Post

“The book’s blend of brainy repartee, soulful poignancy and literary game-playing calls to mind the work of Tom Stoppard. . . . Droll, probing and heartbreaking.”
—Chicago Tribune

“Thomas Mallon’s writing sneaks up on you. No verbal pyrotechnics, a one-foot-after-the-other narrative approach—but every so often, you pause and realize that he’s been stringing together one perfectly balanced sentence after another, chapter after chapter. . . . Mallon is effective at evoking a time—not so unlike ours—when rationalism and mystical thought overlapped in unpredictable, personal ways.”
—Salon

“A wonderful piece of historical fiction. Mallon is a subtle, careful writer who packs his books with thought-provoking depth.”
—The Denver Post 

“Mallon spreads, like a tapestry, a defining historical moment. He then illuminates it through the lives of its minor players, both real and imagined. . . . Two Moons is rich in texture and atmosphere.”
—Star Tribune

“Mallon reliably marshals the kind of period detail that makes him a formidable historical novelist.”
—Publishers Weekly

“American history, technological innovations, and romance excite Mallon’s incisive intelligence and lithe imagination. . . . Readers witness all these goings-on through the sharp eyes of Mallon’s irresistibly down-to-earth heroine, Cynthia May, a witty, freethinking, and mathematically gifted war widow. . . . Mallon refracts questions of war, woman’s rights, and the ordering of the cosmos through the perfect prism of his heroine’s mind, adeptly mixing keen social commentary with sheer entertainment.”
—Booklist 

“[A] breezy and entertaining historical caper. . . . Mallon recounts his characters respective machinations with good-humored energy in an essentially well-paced narrative. . . . He composes unfailingly graceful sentences, makes transitions expertly, and communicates nicely both his characters’ and his own pure pleasure in the spectacle of a vigorous country newly at peace and pleased to kick up its political and sexual heels.”
—Kirkus Reviews