Joe's older brother Ed, arrested at eighteen, has been in jail since Joe was seven. An already tenuous family life - a shady neighbourhood, a dead drug dealing father - crumbled with Ed gone. Abandoned by an alcoholic mother who never showed she wanted them anyway, Joe and his sister Angela were left to either fend for themselves or be taken in by their religious Aunt Karen. Ed's kept in touch through letters from Texas, but now that he's been given a date of execution, Joe feels one of them must answer his request for a visit. At first, the person behind the glass seems like a stranger: ten years older, tattooed, hardened and bruised by his time in the prison system. Piece by piece, Joe finds that his brother is still his brother: he talks, he cares, he hopes. But his fate rests on a final series of appeals, and Joe can't yet bear to think beyond each visit.

Punchy, audacious and carefully constructed, Crossan's choice of characters - many flawed, others unlikeable - in this book aligns with her established narrative interest in outsiders. The fallout of Ed's sentence has created invisible casualties Joe and Angela, but the loyalty between them is persistent. She emphasises tremendous humanity while anticipating, and asking, questions of her audience. The minor characters are forgettable and it's not exactly an enjoyable read, but it's almost impossible not to get swept into Crossan's writing. For fans of particularly stunning poetry or twisty, complex plots, her unflashy verse ('like a rock into a river / she fell') may a little too close to functional here, but there is a whole story packed into its pages. There are hints of books like Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas to the subjects of Moonrise - social disintegration, family breakdown, corruption, injustice and capital punishment - but it's written in Crossan's unmistakable style.

A full version of this review will appear on my blog closer to publication.