They don't do anything about it, and he's so enraged that nothing is done that then he decides to implement just one small portion of it, in play, essentially.

And it seems too plausible to him, and he reports it to his superiors. And he's so alarmed and terrified - no sooner has he had sort of the relish of conceiving this plan than he is afraid of it.

He kind of evolves this elaborate fantasy about just how easy it would be for a small team of highly trained German commandos with a submarine to land not very far from Washington, D.C., and quickly subdue and conquer it in a matter of a few days. it's in the middle of a war, it's after Pearl Harbor, but doesn't seem to really be shoring up its security leaks in the way that he feels is appropriate. So as a young soldier, with a little bit of a bloodthirsty nature, arriving in sleepy, somnolent Washington, D.C. He has a very efficient, methodical engineer's mind. I mean everybody feels that way, sooner or later! The grandfather is a stickler. On why the fictional grandfather wanted to blow up Washington, D.C. 'And he brought out a whole bunch of stories and anecdotes that I had never heard before.' He was on heavy painkillers and his mind wandered, and it wandered into the past,' Chabon says. 'Very much like the grandfather in the book, he was lying in a rented hospital bed in my mother's house in Oakland, Calif., in terminal stages of cancer. The grandson can finally see his grandfather as a young man, an unheralded hero of the OSS in World War II, an engineer who dreamed of the stars, a pool hustler, a lover and an unabashed felon.Ĭhabon tells NPR's Scott Simon that the origin of the story lies with his actual, nonfictional grandfather. Mike, the narrator, goes to his grandfather on his deathbed, where strong painkillers crack open the stories the old man has kept under wraps for so long. Moonglow, Michael Chabon's new novel, is like a moonshot in search of life before it goes dark. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Moonglow Author Michael Chabon

Moonglow by Michael Chabon