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Summary
Summary
The author of such acclaimed Navajo mysteries as Skinwalkers and Talking God brings his unique gift for recreating an exotic culture and a distant place to bear on a story set in Southeast Asia, as a newspaperman searches a war-racked realm for his dead brother's child.
Author Notes
Tony Hillerman was born in Sacred Heart, Oklahoma on May 27, 1925. During World War II, he enlisted in the Army and was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart after being severely injured during a raid behind German lines. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1948.
From 1948 to 1962, he covered crime and politics for newspapers in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, eventually working his way up to the position of editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican. He taught at the University of Mexico and went on to chair the journalism department for more than 20 years. He retired in 1985.
His first novel, The Blessing Way, was published in 1971. During his lifetime, he wrote 29 books, including the popular 18-book mystery series featuring Navajo police officers Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, two non-series novels, two children's books, and nonfiction works. He received numerous awards during his lifetime including the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Novel for Dance Hall of the Dead in 1974, the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award for Skinwalkers in 1987, the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award in 1991, the Navajo tribe's Special Friend Award, France 's Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, the 2002 Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement Award, the Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction Book for Seldom Disappointed, and the Wister Award for Lifetime achievement in 2008. He died from pulmonary failure on October 26, 2008 at the age of 83.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Location figures powerfully in Hillerman's newest novel, but it isn't the Southwest of his Navajo mysteries (Sacred Clowns, etc.), nor is this a Joe Leaphorn story. In April 1975, Moon Mathias, managing editor of a small-town Colorado newspaper, begins a redemptive journey that takes him first to Manila and then across the South China Sea to Cambodia, just as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge begin their reign of terror. Moon's brother Ricky, owner of a helicopter transportation service based in Cambodia, has recently died in a jungle crash. Their mother receives word that Ricky's baby daughter is being smuggled out of Vietnam to the Philippines. After his mother has a heart attack in the Manila airport, Moon takes over her mission, but the child does not arrive. Finding and contacting Ricky's acquaintances, Moon fights time, political exigencies and his ignorance of his brother's life as he tries doggedly to locate his niece. The effort involves an appealing cast, including a wealthy Chinese man seeking his ancestors' bones, a Dutch woman searching for her missionary brother and Vietnamese refugees, who join Moon on a suspenseful, albeit not quite credible, journey to a series of villages along the Mekong River. In the end, as the title suggests, Moon finds more than he'd known was lost. Hillerman's mastery of setting and his compassionate, patient characterization are fully present in this tale, which is otherwise somewhat formulaic. 350,000 first printing; $300,000 ad/promo; HarperAudio. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Hillerman apologizes in his introduction for "wandering away" from his usual southwestern setting and from the extraordinarily popular Chee/Leaphorn duo, but the departure has resulted in what is undoubtedly one of Hillerman's most affecting, strongest, best-told tales yet. Set in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War, the story follows Colorado newspaper editor Malcolm "Moon" Mathias, who labors under the misapprehension that he's "third-rate" --unsuccessful in his career, unlucky in love, and unwise about life. As the story begins, Moon gets a call from an L.A. hospital reporting that his mother has collapsed at the airport after suffering a serious heart attack. She was headed for the Philippines, so Moon figures her trip must have had something to do with his younger brother, Ricky, a former air force pilot who had set up his own transport business in Vietnam, then died in a plane crash. When Moon reaches L.A., he finds papers in his mother's purse that reveal Ricky was the father of a Vietnamese daughter--whom Moon's mother was obviously on her way to rescue. Of course, responsibility for finding the baby falls on Moon's capable shoulders. And it's on his heartrending, dangerous, surprising journey into his brother's past on the Mekong Delta that Moon eventually finds not only the child, but his own destiny. A tragic tale of war, a suspenseful adventure story, a gripping journey into man's deepest fears, and an engrossing love story. (Reviewed Sept. 15, 1995)0060177721Emily Melton
Kirkus Review
In the darkest hour of the American withdrawal from Vietnam, a slow-horse newspaperman fights to rescue the niece whose existence he's just discoveredin this swift-moving tale from Navajo chronicler Hillerman (Sacred Clowns, 1993, etc.). The scene is familiar: the abrupt American departure in April 1975, followed within days by the fall of the Republic of Vietnam, the brutal ethnic cleansing in Cambodia by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the chaos that turns inoffensive villagers into refugees, fleeing the countryside with the Americans and the ARVN. But the hero swimming against this tide is new to the scene, and so is his author, whose bestselling novels about Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Det. Jim Chee hardly prepare for his most unheroic hero yet: portly, balding Malcolm ``Moon'' Mathias, whose life as managing editor of a third-rate Colorado daily is suddenly put on hold when his mother collapses en route to Manila and a search through her papers reveals that Moon's kid brother, Ricky, a hotshot civilian flier, left an infant daughter when he and his Vietnamese wife were killed in a helicopter crash. As Moon and the motley companions who cluster around himLum Lee, the elderly friend and ``business associate'' of Ricky's in search of a missing consignment from the helicopter; Osa van Winjgaarden, who's trying to rescue her brother from the martyrdom he's been thirsting for; George Rice, the pilot who didn't fly Ricky's daughter, Lila Vinh, out as planned; and Nguyen Nung, the ARVN deserter with ``Kill Cong'' tattooed on his chestdescend into the heart of the Mekong darkness, Hillerman exults in the swift geographical trajectory open to him outside the Navaho reservation. At the same time, it's clear why the novel isn't called Finding Lila Vinh: Moon's journey is also very much one into the past, and into the nonentity he's chosen all these years to be. A familiar tale, movingly told by a surprising voice.
Library Journal Review
Beginning with The Blessing Way (LJ 5/15/70), Hillerman has contrasted the contemporary cultures of Southwestern Native Americans with the dominant U.S. culture, creating best-selling mysteries in the process. Finding Moon is a dramatic departure, but it contains similar cultural contrasts. Set mostly in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon in 1975, it is the tale of Moon Mathias, self-described third-rate editor of a third-rate Colorado newspaper who, when his younger brother dies in Southeast Asia, discovers that there is a baby daughter missing somewhere in Vietnam. Reluctantly drawn into a search for the child, Moon is thereby drawn into a search for his own values. He leads a motley group of culturally varied misfits in his quest. With its vivid characters and a strong sense of place, trademarks of Hillerman mysteries, this tale will likely receive a strong reception in libraries everywhere. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/95.]-Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Finding Moon Novel, A Chapter One Phnom Penh, Cambodia, April 12 (Agence France-Presse) -- The United States abandoned its embassy here this morning, with six helicopters sweeping into the embassy grounds to evacuate the ambassador and his remaining staff. The action came as the last resistance of the Cambodian Army collapsed and Khmer Rouge troops poured into the capital, many of them riding on captured tanks and trucks. The First Day April 12, 1975 Sirley was giving Moon the caller-on-hold signal when he came through the newsroom door. He acknowledged Shirley with the I'll-call-'em-back signal, threw his hat on the copy desk, sat down, and looked at D. W. Hubbell. "Nothing much," Hubbell said. "AP has an early tornado in Arkansas. Pretty mediocre, but it could get better. Things are still going to hell in Nam, and Ford has a press conference scheduled for eleven Washington time, and Kissinger issued a statement, and General Motors --" "What did Henry say?" Hubbell did not bother to look up from his duties, which at the moment involved chopping copy from the teletype machine into individual stories and sorting them into trays. The trays were variously labeled PAGE ONE, SPORTS, FEATURES, FUNNY, SOB STUFF, and PIG IRON -- the pig iron being what Hubbell considered "seriously dull stuff that the League of Women Voters reads." Hubbell said, "What did Henry say? Let's see." He glanced at the top item in the PIG IRON file. "Henry said that Dick Nixon was correct in declaring we had won the war in Southeast Asia. He said the North Viets were just too stubborn to understand that, and the press was playing up the current setbacks to make it look like a disaster, and it was going to be the fault of the Congress for not sending more money, and anyway don't blame Kissinger. Words to that effect." "What looks good for the play story?" Moon asked, and sorted quickly through the FRONT PAGE tray. The United States seemed to be evacuating the embassy at Phnom Penh. Moon saved that one. The new president of South Vietnam, something-or-other Thieu, was picking a fight-to-the-death bunch for his cabinet. Moon discarded it. A bill to put a price ceiling on domestic oil production was up for a vote in a Senate committee. That was weak but a possibility. The South Viets were claiming a resounding victory at Xuan Loc, wherever that was. He tossed that one too. Senator Humphrey declared that we should establish a separate U.S. Department of Education. There'd be some interest in that. The Durance County Commissioners had moved the road to the ski basin up a notch on the priority list. Most of the 28,000 subscribers the paper claimed would be interested in that one. And then there was a colorful, gruesome feature on the plight of refugees pouring into Saigon from points north. It was good human interest stuff, but even as he read it Moon was conscious of how quickly these accounts of tragedy from Vietnam had become merely filler -- like the comics and Ann Landers and the crossword puzzle. A few years ago they had been personal. Then he'd searched through the news for references to Ricky's Air Mobile brigade, for actions using helicopters, for anything involving the Da Nang sector where Ricky's maintenance company was stationed. But since Ricky resigned his commission in 1968, Ricky had been out of it. And since 1973 the United States of America was also out of it. What was left of the war was a distant abstraction. As Hubbell had described it once, "Just another case of our gooks killing their gooks." In the press across America, and in the Morning Press-Registe r of Durance, Colorado, the war was no longer page one. But it was still page one sometimes at the Press-Register -- until last month. Ricky was still in Nam, a player on the sidelines. That made Moon interested and made him think the Press-Register's readers would also be. Now Ricky was dead, no longer running R. M. Air and fixing helicopters for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam just as he had fixed them for the U.S. Army. Probably the same copters, in fact. But as Ricky had said in one of his rare letters, he was "getting a hell of a lot more money and a hell of a lot less aggravation from division headquarters." There was a kickback to ARVN brass, but Ricky considered that "the equivalent of an income tax." Ricky had said more. He had said, Come and join me, big brother. Come and join the team. Join the fun. It would be like old times. He'd said, South Nam is going under, and fast. Soon there'll be no more fat contracts from ARVN, but there will still be plenty of need for what R. M. Air can offer. Help me get this outfit ready for the change. And he'd said (Moon remembered the exact words), "R. M. Air is no good for slogans. We'll rename it M. R. Air, for Moon and Rick, and call it Mister Air. I'll do the business, you keep the engines running. Come on. With all that money she's married to now, Mom doesn't need you anymore. But I do." Which was just Ricky buttering him up. Their mother had never needed him. Victoria Mathias wasn't a woman who needed people. And neither did Ricky. But bullshit or not, Moon had enjoyed thinking about making the move, even while he was wondering why Ricky had invited him. But he had never answered the letter. There hadn't been time. "That Arkansas twister is looking better," Hubbell said, inspecting the copy now emerging from the teletype. "The new lead says they got thirteen dead now." He waved the paper at Moon, looking mildly pleased with himself. Finding Moon Novel, A . Copyright © by Tony Hillerman. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Finding Moon by Tony Hillerman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
