Falling from the Moon

Pounding drums in the woods, a missing father, and a glimpse into the world of peace and healing gatherings unite in Falling From The Moon. Two young women face the harsh realities of growing up surrounded by direct action, marijuana culture, and baking bread in the woods. 25-year old Sapphire embarks on a quest to find her father, who vanished when she was ten and who, she believes, holds the key to her future. Her journey takes her to a peace and healing gathering where a community of counter-culture characters dispense advice and marijuana around late-night campfires. Along the way she hooks up with, Lauren, a pregnant environmental activist from California's North Coast trying to imagine a future that leaves her on the sidelines of tree sits and chaining herself to bulldozers, a Vietnam veteran with blood on his hands dedicated to helping others, and a teenage boy with mental health problems. Together, they create a future out of tragedy.

About the Author :
Karin Zirk has a doctorate in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where her dissertation focused on using mythic artifacts and journal writing to enhance well-being in family caregivers. While at Pacifica, she served as a peer reviewer and student editor for Mythological Studies Journal. She has a bachelor of arts degree in Literature\Creative Writing from the University of California, San Diego and received a grant to fund work on her novel from the Elizabeth George Foundation for unpublished writers. Her poetry, short stories, and scholarly articles have been published in small offbeat journals. Notes from the Road, a poetry chapbook about Karin's years living in a Volkswagen camper van and traveling the United States, was published many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Falling From The Moon is her first novel. In her spare time, she blogs about creating safe and sane peace and healing gatherings. Karin lives in a beach community in San Diego where she spends as much time as she can swimming in the ocean and riding her bike. She is the Executive Director of the Friends of Rose Creek, a community group focused on protecting and restoring her local creek.

Review :
Falling From the Moon is the most authentic counterculture novel since Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang and Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia. Her story of two women with different quests colliding at a counterculture gathering explores today's alternative values in a setting that has never before been written about in such an up close and personal novel. It's a page-turner whose waves of ideas will leave you pondering our social values for a long time to come. --Garrick Beck, True Stories: Tales From the Generation of a New World Culture Falling From The Moon is a dreamlike invitation into a counter-culture ritual of peace, love, community and nature that exposes the imperfect humanity of the seekers drawn together in the redwoods while illuminating their yearnings for understanding and forgiveness. Sapphire's story reminds us that our own stories hold the power to both wound and to heal. Our stories are not just our own. -Mary A. Wood, Ph.D., Co-Chair Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life, Pacifica Graduate Institute A search for a lost parent; a journey through a world that is close to many of us but seen by few; a bonding of women through the difficult circumstances of life. All of it moving along to the beat of a thousand drums offered up into the night sky. Falling From the Moon is a moving story told with compassion, at times a mystery in the woods and at others a heartbreaking family drama that takes place within the larger "family" of all humanity, as expressed by those who gather in peace to work toward a better way of loving one another. Zirk leads us by the hand to parts unknown, but by the end we are indebted to her as an initiate is to their first drum circle.--Chris Boyd, Producer, Director, Writer, The First Padres, Last Night in Edinburgh I fell in love with Falling From The Moon by Karin Zirk; it has everything I want in a good read: compelling characters, an exotic setting, a story that keeps me turning pages and writing that bids me linger to savor the language. Set against the Gathering for Peace and Healing of the Planet in beautiful Plumas National Forest, this timely book reminds us of our need for environmental consciousness, and that love for one another and peace for the world are still ideals to strive for. --Judy Reeves, Wild Women, Wild Voices" Falling from the Moon is more than a tale of a Sapphire, a woman endeavoring on a quest to find her long-lost father while ultimately discovering herself. The true star of this book is the canvas upon which the story is drawn. Exhibiting the keen eye of an ethnographer, Zirk's writing conjures a world, brutally honest and rich with detail, allowing readers to travel through time and space not to any specific place, but to a temporary utopian moment. -- Michael I. Niman, Ph.D. Professor, State University New York, Buffalo, People of the Rainbow: A Nomadic Utopia