Finding Moon

I had expected another Chee or Leaphorn story. This is more of an adventure, than a mystery. The story is set at the tail end of the Vietnam war, the protagonist, Moon Methias, is searching for the daughter of his deceased brother. In the process of finding his neice, he also finds himself. The book is about him remaking himself through adventure that mounts, he persists in spite of himself. The reader is lead to believe the search is for the child, but much if it is about himself.

Well-written escapade to rescue a small child. The story is really about a man coming into his own, a voyage of self-discovery, set against the back drop of the collapsing South Vietnamese government. I wasn't as engaged in this Hillerman novel compared to his Southwest Navajo mysteries: perhaps because the debacle of American involvement in the SE Asian conflicts still rankles.

As others report, this is not Leaphorn and Chee. It's an adventure set at the close of the Vietnam War--our hero (Moon) rescues his baby niece from the invading red hoard, does another good deed or two and finds himself. The web site states that Hillerman originally set this at the end of WWII, which would have also worked. Characters are believable and fully developed. Excellent story.

Set in Southeast Asia, this novel is a departure from Mr. Hillerman's Navajo mysteries. Moon Mathias has let his past mistakes keep him from seeing his true self. As the title suggests, his experiences looking for his orphaned niece during the chaos at the end of the Vietnam War are a springboard into who he really is, not who he thinks he is. There's plenty of tension and misery in the novel, along with some subtle romance and genuine humanity in the midst of wartime insanity.

Finding Moon is a book set in 1976 during the Fall of Saigon. There were three people who united together on a quest to find lost items; a baby, an urn of a family member's bones and a brother. The three people went into the forests of Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge were brutally killing entire villages of people on their personal quests. The book from the beginning through the end captured the horrific challenges that were involved in the individual quests in a believable well described story. Four stars were awarded in this review.

Moon Mathias lives with a great grief. He is determined not to fail again, but at what cost? This time he must go into Vietnam and Cambodia in an effort to find his niece and bring her out, but both countries are in the midst of upheaval and turmoil. It is 1975, America is pulling out of Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge are just beginning their cleansing, while everyone else seems to be fleeing danger, Moon must discover if he is to walk right into it.

I learned a lot from this book, mostly the timing of events, but also cultural details and the sad facts of the failure of America in this time of history. Now, this is not a detailed account of the war or its causes, it simply mentions things in passing and looks at them more as someone who show more was living in the moment might have seen them. The author chose to create a brief tale of action rather than a long novel and it works well that way. It is not a mystery. show less

In the very last days of the Indochina war, as the U.S. backed governments I both nations are collapsing, Moon learns that his younger brother who died (technically as a civilian contractor rung his own helicopter company) in Indochina had left behind a baby daughter. Moon sets out to rescue her (or at least put in enough of an attempt to satisfy his conscience) and improbably succeeds with the aid of a Dutch young woman with whom he falls in love. Judging from the dedication, Hillerman himself served in Vietnam in the infantry, so the background is authentic. Aside from that, it is a fairly conventional adventure. less interesting than his Navajo mysteries.