I was contacted by notable 1964 alumnus of the Iowa State Daily Gary Sutton, following an article I wrote about classic literature for the modern college student. I was delighted when he asked me if I would like to read his first, recently published, novel entitled “Oskaloosa Moon.” After reading “Oskaloosa Moon” I asked Sutton if I could write about if for the Daily. As an opinion columnist, I will provide something very similar to a normal review, though a bit more expansive.

“Oskaloosa Moon,” follows the titular character Moon, a deformed, illegitimate child born to Catholic and Nazarene parents, through life as he grows from boyhood, attends our own Iowa State, and moves from career to career seeking acceptance in spite of his deformity. It is set in the late 1950s and depicts very colorfully and honestly the culture and space of small town Iowa, a picture that proves both endearing at times and horrifying at others.

Moon grows up in Oskaloosa amid the rise of hot rods and milkshakes, surrounded by a close minded, religiously sheltered community that neither accepts his deformed face or his bastard birth.

Sutton’s protagonist bears this in his younger years with a meekness that could only come from ignorance of his true value and in later years with a tempered yet innocent outlook on his circumstance. In Moon, Sutton crafts a character that is at once believable, simple and endearing, and speaks with a frank honesty reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn. Moon’s simple innocence and often self defeating honesty provide a beautiful contrast to the irrational bigotry of 1950s rural America.

Written as a series of journal entries, “Oskaloosa Moon” describes a life of beauty and hardship in a conversational style that pays homage to a few of Sutton’s personal inspirations: Mark Twain, and Des Moines’ own Bill Bryson. While, “Oskaloosa Moon” lacks the descriptive brilliance of a Steinbeck novel and it’s language never soars, it retains a warmth of heart that makes it appeal to readers and gives it an authentically Midwestern feel.

“Oskaloosa Moon” is at once a both a simple and complex novel. While being written in simple, direct speak, the novel nonetheless forces the reader to contemplate real and brutal ethical problems. It asks such timeless questions as, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and “Is a man born with an immutable nature?” within an amusing and touching situational frame work.

For ISU students, this novel offers something to which we may compare our modern college experience, and an interesting lens through which we can view the modern freedom of thought and opinion we enjoy with near boundless impunity.

It is also an eye-opening read with regard to changes in the standard of living. In one scene at the dinner table, Moon describes a meal that most these days would find beneath them.

It transcends his every expectation as he portrays it with his usual innocence, “I ate a hot roast beef sandwich, chewing real slow, and that thing tasted so good I wished it could last forever. It wasn’t really a sandwich, but a slice of white Wonder Bread on the plate, a slab of beef with hardly any gristle and a scoopful of mashed potatoes on the top, plus brown gravy ladled across the whole thing. It cost us all of two bits, for crying out loud … The King of England had nothing over me that day.”

Being an ISU alumnus himself, Sutton brings a reality to the pages of “Oskaloosa Moon” that can only be imbued in an author through personal experience. I am excited to see to what will come next from Sutton and to see his writing style mature.

“Oskaloosa Moon” sits in my mind as a book that will interest readers from many backgrounds, but resonate most strongly with those of us that still hear the echoes of rural America in our speech and the traditions of economy in our everyday lives.