Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Chabon's "Moonglow" Memoir Gleaning His Grandfather's Amazing Life

Michael Chabon (b Amer 1963) is a gifted writer.  Chabon is a successful novelist, screenwriter & columnist whose won a Pulitzer & Hugo Prize.  His book "Moonglow" is a memoir of his family rotating around his maternal grandfather's storytelling.  "Moonglow" received a Nat'l Book Nom.  It's a  stunning achievement for eloquent writing & bio of his grandfather; an extraordinary man.  It's significant that Chabon clarifies "…90% of everything he {my grandfather} ever told me about his life.  I heard during his final 10 days."  Michael informs us everything was kept to himself until completing his research & memoir.  Michael's mom brought her father home to care for him during his final months with terminal cancer.  The family patriarch Michael had regarded as stoic & measured, discloses his incredible life to his crafty story writing grandson.   The grandfather was a soldier in WWII.  He married a Jewish, French woman who survived the camps but not emotionally unscathed.  She suffered  mental illness requiring hospitalization.  The grandfather's fascinating life included work as an engineer.  He served in the military & time in both military & civilian prisons.  He worked various odd sales jobs, was a rocket scholar and highly intelligent.  Michael's mother is his grandfather's step-daughter.  Her heretofore undisclosed, disturbing origins; a child of Nazi rape, had remained concealed.  During the war, grandfather was assigned to capture technicians & men of science on the black list for the US to propel their own scientific agenda; in particular the development of rocket ships & bombs.  Wernher von Braun (b Germany 1912-1977) was grandfather's lifelong nemesis and focus of admiration.  Having come close to capturing von Braun in WWII, he succeeded in recovering many of WvB's hidden papers.  The two crossed paths in FL in 1975 when von Braun received the Nat'l Medal of Science.  Chabon's grandfather was a sagacious & remorseful man.  "von Braun should not be extolled & glorified without shouldering the shame of the slaughter of millions."  He also noted "Ambitious men from Hercules to Napoleon have stood ankle-deep in slaughter as they reached for the heavens."   "The ideals of justice, of openness, of protecting the weak - of fundamental decency for which I had fought,….meant nothing to the country that espoused them.  They were encumbrances to be circumvented in the exercise of power."  Glimmering throughout this enlightening memoir are Chabon's literary references to the mystifying beauty of our moon. "He passes silver moon trees like the skeletons of cacti." "Though the moon was high and nearly full, its light hung diffuse & opaque as if moonlight were only an inferior brand of darkness."  Despite all the amazing accomplishments, Michael's grandfather felt only failure. "You look back and you see all you did, with all that time, is waste it.  All you have is a story of things you never started or couldn't finish."  "Moonglow" is a masterpiece that radiates.