Luna

Richard Matturro

Zach Tonner's life changes abruptly when he answers an intriguing personal ad: Child of myth seeks god of desire. Abandon your past; relinquish your future; pursue only me. Zach gets the enchantment he asks for (and more) when he meets Luna, a lithe woman with a lifelong obsession for wooden rollercoaster who claims her father is "god of the river."

224 pages

ISBN: 1-931982-73-2 Library Binding $26.00         Sale $13.00

ISBN: 1-931982-74-0 Trade Paper     $15.95         Sale $8.00

Richard Matturro, a native of Rye, New York, holds a doctorate in English, with a specialization in Shakespeare and Greek Mythology. After sixteen years at the Albany Times Union, he now teaches in the English Department at UAlbany and lives on a farm in the foothills of the Berkshires. Luna is his second novel.

    Zach was early. He was always early for things. It was a vice he was rather ashamed of, since he associated it with middle class values and provincialism. Important people, sophisticated people didn’t have to arrive on time. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t quite shake the habit. Zach was too afraid of missing something.
He pulled his car into the small parking lot and shut off the engine, then twisted the rear-view mirror slightly so he could see his face in it. Unnecessarily he ran his fingers through his black hair and flashed a smile at the image staring back at him. He tried to gauge whether that smile projected just the right mix of warmth and worldliness. Then he felt silly practicing facial expressions and twisted the mirror back in disgust.
The other cars in the lot were all empty save one. The driver’s side door open wide, a balding, middle-aged man in a pale blue jogging suit was bending over and tying the laces of his running shoes. It was the after-work hour, the time when business people flooded out of the nearby office buildings. Some of them used the bike path along the river to run off the accumulated stress of the day. Zach too had issued from one of those buildings, but he had not come to the river for exercise. He had come for an assignation.