Summary

At the outset of The Half Moon, in Chapter 1, Malcolm Gephardt drove up to the bar he owned and observed the crowd. While most other businesses had heeded the inclement weather warnings and closed, he planned to keep the Half Moon open until the snow started to fall. When he got out of the car, he dreaded regulars asking how he was and having to “pretend he didn’t know what they were talking about” (2). He wondered if the same people checked on Jess. Since Malcolm took over the Half Moon, the clientele had dwindled, the usual crowds of construction workers and commuters no longer predictably visited the bar. Jess had warned him about changing things at the Half Moon but Malcolm did not realize that “people didn’t want things to be nice, they wanted them to be familiar” (7). Malcolm was...