This is just one of many instances where Chabon’s fictional world seems to bleed into the world in which we all live. and helps NASA send men to the moon in 1969. In the real nonfictional world, Von Braun goes on to join the U.S. What he learns there is that the German engineer Wernher Von Braun has been aiding the Nazis in missile technologies. Once trained in espionage, he goes to Europe to serve as a soldier and spy. During this time, the world is in the throes of WWII, and the grandfather is selected to be a spy. He gets an engineering degree from Drexel Tech and enlists in the United States Army Corps of Engineers. What the narrator learns is that his grandfather was born in 1920 in South Philadelphia in Jewish slums. His grandfather is dying of bone cancer and his painkillers are making him unusually talkative. The entirety of the novel takes place in just one week. Moonglow opens with the narrator visiting his grandfather on his deathbed in 1989. The events are told in a non-linear anecdotal fashion, so structurally it can be hard to follow. Published in 2016, Chabon’s novel is best described as a fictional nonfiction autobiography: true events wrapped in a fabricated narrative to shed light on the intricacies of human emotion and action. From the perspective of the dying man’s grandson, we learn of love, suffering, and the impact of lies all set in the twentieth century. It tells the winding story of a man’s deathbed confessions. Michael Chabon’s Moonglow is a New York Times bestseller and highly acclaimed novel.

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