Despite Kit’s early fame as a musician, his likeability and his ability to find friends in any environment, a sense of what Marti labels “aloneness” is an aura around Kit. He searches, not satisfied or content where he or with what he is. Even with a successful musical career, he experiments with drugs and then drug smuggling from Mexico. Off on bail while waiting imprisonment, he takes off and rides the rails, as the “hobos” did during the Depression, searching for the adrenalin rush, the sense of living in the moment, which he cannot grasp.

I asked Marti about this. “Kit is not unusual in being very outgoing and making friends easily, all while sublimating an inner “aloneness” (I wouldn’t call it a loneliness). It’s a protective measure, I think. And I wanted to make Kit's “vulnerability” very evident in the book.”

Even in moments of uncertainty or hostility, at a homeless camp or on the prison bus, others trust Kit. This is partially because of his personality and partially as he uses his singing to relate to others, even a prison guard. They both become his safety net. A character who could easily be a villain, on the dark side, is just someone you root for, hope that he can get himself back on the right road.

When Kit was a child and lived in an apartment with his mother, Bruno, the building’s caretaker, took pity on this very alone boy, clearly troubled although Bruno may not have known about Kit’s mother’s abuse. They form a friendship, one of the early ones in the novel. Once sitting outside, they both see a battered Monarch butterfly, wings torn, still gracefully flying. “But still she flew—with grace and strength and wondrous freedom… Kit asked Bruno if [Bruno] thought Kit would be able to fly free like that someday….. “Yes Christoper, you will be flying away one day…and the holes, they will fly with you. The places that are torn, that are broken, they do not come back to you. But still….I know… you will fly.”

There are many friendships in Blinding the Moon and the concept of friendship is more than meets the eye. Somehow, friendship becomes a merging of souls, a guide and a giver of wisdom. In our modern culture, despite instant communication, many people, especially young people, feel alone. Friendship is a measure of wealth, not in terms of money, but in terms of support and perspective in difficult times. As I told Marti, the friendships in this novel really spoke me and brought a special message. I have been blessed and enriched with a few of these friendship in my life, and like Kit, guided to fly again.

I asked Marti if it were difficult to write from a male point of view, from a character whose life was so unlike her own. “I… don’t think writing from the viewpoint of a man even though I am a woman is that difficult. I think we are much the same inside. And this is where I write from.”

That we are “much the same inside” is what makes Marti’s writing so accessible, in this novel and in other works of hers. I read her biweekly newspaper column and feel a closeness to someone I have never met. We feel a closeness to Kit and those he encounters on the roads of his life. His life was not easy, many choices not appropriate, yet inside, we find common ground.

The way Marti develops her characters, plot and conflicts make her writing exceptional. Her word choices are evocative creating pictures in our minds as we read her words. She is a writing I want to return to again and again.

Sausage and Roasted Veggies are an easy and comforting meal, perfect for all the stages of Kit’s life: budget-friendly, easy to make and comforting, whether cooking for one, riding the rails with different people contributing ingredients, veggie friendly in Taos and at last in his own apartment. Delicious for you too!