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His wife, Claire, leaves the house on this same night to go on a midnight run--only to find herself bumming cigarettes and beer outside the all-night convenience store.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAs the summer lingers and the temperature rises, this quotidian town's adults grow wilder and more reckless while their children grow increasingly confused. Claire, Don, and their neighbors and friends find themselves on an existential odyssey, exploring the most puzzling quandaries of marriage and maturity. When does a fantasy become infidelity? When does compromise become resentment? When does routine become boring monotony? Can Claire and Don survive everything that befalls them in this one summer, forgive their mistakes, and begin again?\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAward-winning writer Dean Bakopoulos delivers a brutally honest and incredibly funny novel about the strange and tenuous ties that bind us, and the strange and unlikely places we find connection. 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Please Don't Come Back from the Moon is an original and brilliant first work of fiction.\" -Lorrie Moore\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe summer Michael Smolij turns sixteen, his father disappears. One by one other men also vanish from the blue-collar neighborhood outside Detroit where their fathers before them had lived, raised families, and, in a more promising era, worked. One man props open the door to his shoe store and leaves a note. \"I'm going to the moon,\" it reads. \"I took the cash.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe wives drink, brawl, and sleep around, gradually settling down to make new lives and shaking off the belief in an American dream that, like their husbands, has proven to be a thing of the past. 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