Readers' Comments - Moons and Junes

Moons and Junes is another wonderful novel for young people set in a realistically portrayed intentional community. Claire Garden's first, Child of the Wild Wind (reviewed in the Fall '04 issue), introduced Mockingbird, a 12-year-old boy, and his dad, Jacob, as they joined Wild Wind community in rural Iowa. In Moons and Junes the protagonist is 13-year-old Megan, a girl from the local town who visits Wild Wind, only to have her life, and that of her parents, profoundly challenged and changed. (Most of the same characters from Child of the Wild Wind appear in Moons and Junes as well; however, each book is "stand alone" and one not need to read the other book to get the context.)

Here's why I am impressed by Moons and Junes: First, even though it is sympathetic to and entertaining and humorous for young people, it grabbed my attention as well-I wanted to know what the characters would do next!

Second, as in Child of the Wild Wind, Claire got the community setting so right- or at least, this specific kind of community. Wild Wind is income-sharing commune with onsite businesses and all the usual community characters-the managers who want others to be productive and efficient, the grumbling slackers who resent the "Fascists" (hey, isn't it like this in your community too?), the community veteran who stops all efforts to change things, the nurturing community process folks, the weird-vibe visitors who do bizarre things and give the community a bad name with the neighbors. Like East Wind, where Claire lived for a year and a half, community members live in small-group residences each with their own room, raise organic food, use composting toilets, eat in the community kitchen, pick their own chores and work projects but have rotating mandatory kitchen clean-up, dress from the free clothes bin (also called Commie Clothes), wear fanciful costumes or go partially unclothed, shower in unisex showers and consider nudity no big deal. And like mainstream culture people (and parents) everywhere, Megan at first, and her parents, are suspicious of and resentful toward the-- no doubt--unwashed hippie Communists for undermining the traditional decent values that we hold dear and want to instill in our children. Classic. But not stereotypical. The characters, from Megan and her town friends to her hardworking parents and the folks at Wild Wind, were all sympathetically drawn and quite believable to me. There aren't good guys and bad guys, but realistically portrayed people whose points of view you can understand.

Third, the plot helps reveal and illuminate real community issues, with no soft-pedaling. People who don't show up for their work shifts and do shoddy work; frustrated managers who quit in disgust or put up, not only with no honor, but widespread resentment. People who want a stricter new-member policy to select for people who don't drink or smoke to excess and seem responsible; people who prevent such policies so they can get more new members to support their preferred way of life. People who yearn for more personal privacy; people who scorn personal privacy as a middle class hang-up. People who are so countercultural and personally self-expressive that they repel neighbors and potential supporters; people who are so confident and self-reliant that they attract and beneficially influence outsiders.

Lastly, I was impressed because the characters grow and learn from their experiences-they get their consciousness raised. Essentially the message of this book is one that community activist Laird Schaub and the Fellowship for Intentional Community have been putting out there for years: that community process and community values have much to teach the rest of us-that community living has beneficial, exportable "products" for mainstream culture. We get to see this lived out in the characters of Moons and Junes, although not in a preachy way, ever.

One thing that concerns me about the book really has nothing to do with the story or Claire Garden's fine writing style: it's that readers might think, "Oh, this is the way it is in community," rather than, "Oh, this is the way it is in an exceptionally countercultural, rural, income-sharing commune." How I wish we had novels that also realistically portrayed life in a cohousing community, or a student-housing co-op, urban group household, or rural sustainability education center. Or an ecovillage. Hmmm.
My other quibble is that, since this book is electronically published, and thus not sitting cover-up on the table at your local bookstore where people can reach for it and think, "Wow, what's this? A novel set in community." Nevertheless, readers who want to get this book can do so easily, as long as they have Internet access and a printer. (Books Unbound can also mail you a CD.)
I highly recommend Moons and Junes, as well as Child of the Wild Wind, for anyone contemplating community living who wants to know more about what to expect, or who lives in community now, and wants to show their family what it's like.

Reviewed by editor Diana Leafe Christian in Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living, Summer, 2006 [Ms. Christian is the author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities.]

How many times in your life have you had an argument with a very important person in your life, only to discover that talking had just made things worse? After awhile the temptation is just to shut up about the issues dividing you from the other person and hope the problems will just go away.

Megan found herself in this situation. She and her good friend, Athena, disagreed about an issue that was important to each of them. They ended up avoiding each other so that they wouldn't have to speak to each other. However, Athena knew a way to "fight fair". She told Megan they could make up a set of rules for the "fight" that they would both agree to, and then go at the issues head on. The girls each contributed to the list of rules, and each felt responsible for following their agreement. The resulting fair fight cleared the air so that they could be friends again, without either having to give in to the other.

Later, when Megan returned home to her own family, she tried out the fair fighting rules for a family issue. Very creatively, she taught her own parents how to fight fair

I enjoyed reading this account of win-win problem solving. In the 1980s, I had been introduced to the book, Parent Effectiveness Training, by Thomas Gordon (copyright 1970). It was in the context of community living that the concepts were presented to me, but unhappily, as carried out in that group, it was still a matter of a power struggle disguised in trendy words. After reading Athena's and Megan's approach to teaching the method, I think young teens may be the best teachers for "fair fighting".

Esther Frances, Mt. Vernon, Iowa

I have just completed Moons and Junes. I enjoyed the book very much. It is well written and very much suited to the age group of the main characters. I believe it has important things to say about alternative ways of thinking, living, and interacting with each other. Our current way of life is terribly destructive and unsustainable. It is crucial for us to examine alternative ways of living in the world and with each other. It is especially important to expose the very young to such ideas. They are going to need them. If I were still teaching language arts in a middle school I would try to include this book in my reading materials.
The characters were well thought out and their interactions and motivations believable. Most important, though, is the on-going description of life at Wild Wind.
The book provides a lot of information about how the community arranges the tasks and work of the group and how members are expected to conduct themselves. Relationships among the characters, outsiders, the land, consumerism, and farm animals are all discussed. It is also important that these arrangements are situated within the context of time and that the need for change is a source of conflict.
Communities and cultures change and adapt to new circumstances or information. They must adapt or die. Americans desperately need to explore this kind of thinking. This discussion is done within a framework of storytelling which is never didactic or overly preachy.
My only criticism is the story about Roxy and her pregnancy. I thought too much responsibility was laid at Roxy's door and too little at the community's door. Who was the male that impregnated Roxy and what happened to him? Perhaps I missed something.

Elaine Hartley, Columbia, MO

I thoroughly enjoyed Moons and Junes by Claire Garden. Claire has a real knack for tackling complex issues in a lively way through engaging characters and good storytelling. Several humorous passages had me laughing out loud. The dialogue and reactions of her teen characters struck me as being right on target. Young adult readers will definitely resonate with the central conflict between Megan and her parents as well as with the situations that develop with her peers.
Claire's theme of looking at life from both sides is developed well throughout the book, from the title to the conclusion. Her clear examples of the win-win problem solving process provide models that can be used by families, classrooms, and communities to facilitate better communication and greater respect. These skills are much needed in the world today.

Joan McElroy, Columbia, Missouri

In the meantime I couldn't wait to read the sample chapter of Claire's new book, Moons and Junes. So real, so right there, I do recall knowing those girls ! And the phrase "stomp that thought-beetle" is graven at the front of my "waiting for an appropriate conversational situation"section of the gray matter. Maybe I have an adolescent perspective on the world - know I occasionally read and enjoy books aimed at them. A few years ago, I picked up a copy of Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Cat Running - thinking it was about a feline ! Discovered myself in the world of an eleven-year-old girl, Cat Kinsey, who can run-like-the-wind, who builds a secret hideout and befriends a gypsy boy. That book, along with Child of the Wild Wind has stuck in my mind, unlike most of the considerable reading I do.

Phoenix Wheeler, Tucson, AZ

Reading Moons and Junes offers an opportunity to open your mind to more socially- and spiritually-conscious living. It was intriguing to read about the day-to-day operations of a rural commune and to consider the benefits of this alternative lifestyle, while exploring the realities and conflicts inherent in group living. It was interesting to observe that some issues are common to all humans living in any type of close contact. It was inspiring how the children in the commune were generally treated with more respect and equality than seems typical in traditional families and that they were encouraged and expected to contribute at the level of their capability to the operations of the community. I can imagine how empowering and positive this might be in the development of a child's self esteem. The conflict resolution taught in the book is a lesson for all age groups, and I appreciated how it was used in more than one situation. I also loved the attentiveness to a healthy, natural, and environmentally conscious lifestyle.

I would love to see teens from a variety of backgrounds read Moons & Junes to observe how the main character, Megan, who is thirteen, transforms from a girl with a fairly skeptical and prejudiced viewpoint to one who is now more accepting, compassionate, responsible, and respectful in her approach to relationships and interactions. Athena, who was raised in the commune, is a good role model of an adolescent who is mature, capable, and confident, socially responsible, and fun-loving. Many typical adolescent issues are addressed in the book.

Moons and Junes was an enjoyable read with several unexpected plot twists. I finished the book wanting to know what will happen next for Megan, her family, and her friends at Wild Wind community. I give Moons and Junes a thumbs-up, positive endorsement for both parents and teens.

Susan Kohlhagen, St. Louis, MO.
mother of two female adolescents,
a Girl Scout leader for two teenaged troops,
and a registered nurse who studies energy healing and works in a Teen Clinic.

Megan, a thirteen year old who lives in rural Iowa, doesn't want to be left with her grandmother while her parents are vacationing in Hawaii for two weeks in June. Megan convinces her parents that she would be happier staying with friends on a nearby farm. What she does not tell her parents is that this "farm" is Wild Wind, a "hippie commune."

Claire Garden, an experienced communard herself, devotes much of Moons and Junes to describing the look and feel of the place and how Megan reacts. The description reflects the values of shared ownership, material simplicity and ecological awareness that characterize the communal groups belonging to the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, www.thefec.org. Other core principles include equality, non-violence and participatory group decision-making.

I've lived in communities like Wild Wind for the better part of a decade. It is always a pleasure to see this life described in published writing. For those who like to read utopian novels where alternative worlds are described at length, or for people who enjoy the charms of goat milking, berry picking, loin cloths, wrap-around skirts, drumming, canoeing, people with animal names and other features of communal life this sort of thing could be interesting and all the more magical. There are actual places like this.

If intentional communities are sometimes hotbeds of fractiousness, it is also true that they are laboratories for exploring kinder, gentler, and more honest ways of relating. What's called "fair fighting" in this book is one of the forms of cooperative problem solving where participants seek to tone down feeling threatened and defensive and work together to address each other's concerns so that everyone "wins." Athena, raised with lots of different people, is more socially adept and proposes a round of fair fighting to address her differences with Megan. Megan initially distrusts this process but eventually realizes that Athena actually listens to her, something she feels does not happen enough in her own rather traditional family. For instance, her parents didn't even consult her about their plans to leave her with her grandmother.

Fair fighting will come in handy for Megan. Her parents discover Megan's deception upon their return, their anger compounded when they find out that an older male visitor tried to corner Megan in Wild Wind's shower house. They ground her and forbid her to visit Wild Wind or to see the friends she made there.

Most intentional communities do not have locker room style shower rooms where people of both sexes shower in full view of each other. Wild Wind does but has a private shower room as well. Nonetheless, several communities allow at least some public nudity as a kind of freedom statement. Potential visitors are usually forewarned about nudity and how they should behave around it. It is appropriate and realistic that Megan's own reaction to seeing naked people was dealt with early on in her Wild Wind visit. Megan, like most of the real life visitors, manages her discomfort and takes it in stride but there is that occasional newcomer (usually a man) who gets in trouble for habitually gawking or even making an undue advance. These incidents, while not too common, are always infuriating, all the more so if the offender targets a minor. Communards who open their homes to strangers must be able to extend to them considerable trust. Megan's offender is caught before he does anything more and promptly ordered off the property.

Despite the shower house incident Megan has experienced much of the good side of Wild Wind, enriched by its unconventional but basically sensible lifestyle and by the care and wisdom of its admirable folk. She would not reject Wild Wind because someone abusively took advantage of its easy-going ways and deeply resents her parents' judgment that she should no longer have anything to do with Wild Wind or its people.

Instead of blowing up or nursing resentment, Megan facilitates a family meeting, where no one is allowed to interrupt any one else, or to shout or name-call or be sarcastic, or get up and leave in a huff, and "everyone gets to explain what they need." And so a new and better way of being where people listen to each other and hear and respect children, one first experienced at a flawed but well meaning commune, now makes its way into a heretofore conventional family. What are the possibilities?

Howard Fenster, Columbia MO
-- cataloged popular fiction at a public library, and lived in communities and small living groups for over twenty years.
He prefers the call residents of intentional communities "communards" because it recalls the revolutionary spirit of the Paris Commune and because it is one word.