Taking refuge in a small village on the Dorset coast, Tom hopes that Minna will be able to come to terms with the terrible loss they've suffered but for Minna the coast offers her a way to get away from her life, her career, marriage and all that once interested her.
Minna thinks that for her and Tom there is no more future but before she can talk to him both will discover the remains of a human skeleton. Minna and Tom's discussion is put on hold and suddenly it is as if Minna was waking up to life again.
The remains are identified as those belonging to Private Lew Campbell, an American solider, who seems to have drowned during wartime. Minna is consumed by wanting to know more about his story and when she meets Felix, the old woman she ran into on the beach one day, she knows that she can learn who Lew was and what led to his death.
Little by little, Minna coaxes Felix into telling her the story. Taking the reader between past and present the writer gives us the story of a young black American solider who fell in love with a British girl. Felix shares with Minna her own difficult childhood growing up without a mom, her friendship with a local boy which is irrevocably changed one day and how the ugliness of war also reached their idyllic life on the Dorset coast.
While I found the story of the young Felix interesting, I was most moved by Minna. The writer captures the sense of grief Minna is worn down by and how she deals with it. There is one passage where Minna tells Tom that she realizes she is obsessed with the puzzle of Lew's story but that through learning of other people's sad stories she has been able to find comfort.
So despite the heavy subject matter, Playing with the Moon is a hopeful story because it explores how through friendship and sharing one can confront life again.
Added 07/07