He is to track down “the Black List,” the Third Reich scientists, technicians and engineers behind the V-2 rocket, which has been used to wreak destruction all over Allied Europe. During World War II, he serves in the Army Corps of Engineers and then in the Office of Strategic Services, which drops him behind enemy lines just as the war is ending. His lifelong passion for astronomy and rocketry permeates every aspect of this story. Curious, brilliant and often silent, Chabon’s grandfather puts himself through Drexel University (then Drexel Tech) in the 1930s by hustling pool and delivering pianos for Wanamaker’s. Philadelphians especially will enjoy Chabon’s descriptions of his maternal grandfather’s early life in working-class Jewish South Philadelphia at the beginning of the 20th century. Michael Chabon introduces his newest novel, Moonglow, by explaining that it’s not a novel at all, but it’s not quite a memoir either: “I have stuck to facts except when facts refused to conform with memory, narrative purpose or the truth as I prefer to understand it.” That line could be the definition of creative nonfiction itself, for what writer does not sometimes twist personal history for his or her own purposes? In this case, the history is that of Chabon’s grandfather, which he kept mostly secret from his grandson until the last weeks of his life.
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