Finding Moon audiobook

I absolutely LOVED this book! It is not Hillerman's usual fare and I think it is far better :) This was the last book I had left to read that he has written and in this case, I did save the best for last.

319 pages of excellent storytelling, without sex or excess violence. The main character is a small-town newspaper worker from Colorado who is suddenly thrust into the final days of the Vietnam war by his dead brother. Moon Mathias is a Vietnam veteran who has his life back in order, or so he thinks, until a telephone call that lets him know his brother, who was running a charter helicopter service in Vietnam, is dead. Things go from bad-to-worse for Moon. He finds out his brother has a child that he left behind in Cambodia. Moon's mother, who wants to see the grandchild she has never met, has a severe heart attack and is hospitalized. Moon is off on an unplanned journey halfway around the world, from Colorado to The Philippines, to Vietnam in its chaotic end of the war days, and into Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge are rampaging. Into international danger, intrigue and mystery. The locations he visits and the people he meets are all vividly painted by Hillerman as beautifully as in his Navajo mysteries. Get out a good world atlas to follow the action and really immerse yourself into this story.

Like millions of other readers, I first encountered Tony Hillerman in his Leaphorn and Chee mysteries. A master of characterization, intricate, twisty plots, and lush depictions of place, I had fallen in love with his Southwest and gained a much deeper understanding of the Native American cultures that coexisted there. Could those gifts be transplanted to a place outside American borders?In "Finding Moon," Hillerman shows that the answer is a definite yes.Malcolm "Moon" begins his story as a small-town newspaper editor in Colorado. His younger brother Ricky dies in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, where he has been operating an air cargo company. He leaves behind a daughter. Malcolm's mother, Victoria, sets out on a journey to bring the child to America, but she never makes it, suffering a heart attack in the airport that lands her in intensive care, awaiting bypass surgery. This leaves Moon to deal with his mother's illness, followed by his own trip to southeast Asia. Set in the spring of 1975, Moon lands in the final chaotic days of the Vietnamese conflict, the Khmer Rouge's rise to power in Cambodia, and the desperate flood of refugees trying to escape before there is no way out.Along the way, Moon is talked into helping an old man search for his family's ancestral bones, and a Dutch-Indonesian woman seeks his assistance to rescue her brother, a Christian missionary in the mountains of Vietnam.Hillerman keeps all these plot strands singing along, intersecting and tying themselves into a satisfyingly tricky knot. The suspense builds, the emotional stakes continue to rise, and what started out as a story about a man searching for other people and things becomes the tale of how he discovers his true self.Hillerman's insightful comments on the conflicting attitudes of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, Laosian, and Chinese, as well as his honest portrayals of the misguided American efforts in the region, are well worth the experience of reading this book. The conflict might have ended over thirty years ago, but humankind's ability to make the same mistakes in different locations is incredible.

I have loved Tony Hillerman's Navajo novels for years so took a risk to listen to this stand-alone, non-Navajo-character audio book for a drive. It was a good decision! It was refreshing to listen to a well-written tale of war, family struggles, a personal search for identity, interesting characters on a quest, a baby trapped in the disintegrating environment of the collapse of Saigon and the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, a wise priest, a budding love story -- and all without graphic violence, sex, or profanity! The audio production was excellent too. I don't give out 5 stars very often, but this was close.

This Hillerman is often sadly overlooked as it takes place largely in Vietnam and is not part of the Leaphorn and Chee pantheon. It deserves to be read!

I absolutely love all of his books. His stories never disappoint and they keep you in suspense on who killed who and why or what happened or is going to happen!

Initially I was disappointed to discover that this is not one of Hillerman's Navaho mystery novels. I'd already read all of them. It's the title and the cover that misled me, as it looks very Navaho-ish, copyrighted in 1995. The story is set in the 1970s, when the Americans are surrendering Vietnam to the Communists and refugees are fleeing. Moon Mathias's mother has failed in her quest to bring the baby half-Vietnamese daughter of her late son home to the U.S. Moon, deemed an aimless failure in his mother's estimate, picks up the quest because he wants to prove himself to his mother. The errand should take about three days since he has only to pick the baby up in Manila. But complications set in. A man, hoping to find an urn of his ancestors' bones, joins the reluctant Moon. And then a young woman with a Dutch name, who wants to rescue her missionary brother from Vietnam, joins him.Moon wants desperately to end the mission and return home, particularly when he discovers his niece is missing. His giving up would only reinforce his sense of failure in his mother's eyes, and those who join him prove to have certain talents that keep the mission on course, even as it experiences constant reversals. And we discover that Moon is the finder along the way, eventually finding himself and discovering purpose for his life.These are people like you and me. Not super humans. Moon carries us along through his perspective, hearing the sounds of the jungle, feeling the incapacitating humidity, seeing the aftermath of war atrocities, stumbling blindly forward with the help of his companions. The beginning and stage-setting pace is slow, with lots of talk, talk, talk. I was tempted to set the book aside. However Hillerman is a good writer who indulges the subtle in powerful ways. So I read on through the, fortunately, short chapters. Eventually, as difficulties bring Moon and his fellow travelers into the war zone, I felt for our heroes. How would they attain their goals? How would they find their way out? The read turns out to be worthwhile and enlightening. Without gratuitous description of the soul-scarring scenarios, its understatement nevertheless gives us a sense of reality to horrors of that time.

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.

I've just finished reading Finding Moon. Lots of action and suspense in this great read by Tony Hillerman. This is a stand-alone and not part of his Leaphorn and Chee series.

This book was better than I was expecting it to be. Hillerman created a solid motivation for Moon to go to Vietnam to rescue this kid, something I was expecting to be a very weak element of the book. I really liked all of the characters and they all felt real. I especially liked Mr. Lee and the boy that comes up towards the end of the book. The story was well constructed and I think it could work really well as an action movie. That being said, the romance subplot felt forced in, just like many action movies. Overall though, the book was an enjoyable read and a nice book about an era of the Vietnam War many forms of media don’t typically cover.

A gentle sort of international thriller, and more effective than many of the genre as a result. Might actually class it as an adventure story rather than thriller. What really sets it apart is Hillerman's writing, which is a couple of notches above the usual for this type of book. Some of the criticisms about its simplicity and the unvaried nature of the main characters may be valid. Once again, the quality of the writing overwhelms the quibbles, as does the avoidance of the usual violence and nearly impossible skills of the heroes in other books.Possibly some very faint echoes of Buchan, Hammett and Le Carre here, and maybe even Greene, but really all Hillerman.

Really good. The story is about family, self image, others' view of one, and how we deal with that when we finally open our eyes. Moon considers himself a failure, and has to truly confront that when he finds himself dealing with a family emergency. It's kind of a perfect storm of emergencies that put him in a place with people who bring out a part of him he didn't know existed. I won't give you any more than that. This isn't a Tribal Police book. It's written nothing like those. There is action, but the style, Hillerman's voice, is quite different. Not better, but maybe parallel. I liked it and recommend it. Just don't expect Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee. They aren't there.

Sort of a mystery ... I loved all Hillerman's Navaho books and like others here picked this one up thinking it was another. It is completely different, set in VietNam at the winding down of the American involvement in the war there. But the writing is as good, the characters as well developed, the sense of place just as strong. My only quibble was that after 300 pages of challenges and nothing going right, suddenly at the end everything falls into place and all of the main characters find what they were seeking. A little too neat and happy ending-ish, but still a very strong book.

This book was a good change of pace in the Tony Hillerman collection. I found the characters to be quite relatable and believable. The pace of the book was pretty good I felt, maybe even better than many of the usual Hillermans, which are rather prosaic upon occasion.Be aware that readers will need to have a pretty good knowledge of South Asian geography in order to follow this book. Knowledge of the politics and players of the Vietnam War is also a must. I had to read up on some of these topics in order to understand many of the critical portions of the story.

Finding Moon by Tony Hillerman is a story set in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines from April 12, 1975, to May 9, 1975, while the North Vietnamese were taking Saigon, and Pol Pot was ravaging Cambodia with his teen-aged thugs. Matthew (Moon) Mathias is called from his Colorado home to Los Angeles when his mother has a heart attack. She tells him she was on her way to Vietnam because her older son Ricky was killed, and he has a baby daughter that she wants to find and bring to the U.S. Since she can't go, Moon must go instead. When he gets there, he finds everything in chaos and no certain place where the baby Lila might be, although her mother's home in Cambodia, seems the most likely. In his search he picks up two other people also searching for things: Lum Lee is looking for the bones of his ancestors which the Khmer Rouge have thrown out, and Mrs. van Winjgaarden is looking for a way to bring her brother, a missionary, out of Cambodia. Moon's mother has always favored Ricky and thinks of Moon as incompetent, but when he is in the Philippines trying to figure out what to do, he learns that his brother Ricky has told everyone that Moon is a true hero. Moon starts to try to live up to the expectations of Ricky's friends, and he leads the small group from the war in Vietnam to the killing fields of Cambodia. They succeed in two of the three missions. The movements are fraught with danger, and suspense, but on the way back, things move a little too smoothly and quickly. However, they succeed, Lila is saved and taken back to Moon's mother, and he gives up his newspaper job in Colorado, and returns to the Philippines to take over Ricky's job and find people who truly respect and admire him.No, this is not the Four Corners region, but again Hillerman describes southern Asia so well that the reader believes he is there with Moon. It is an uplifting story, and totally believable. Hillerman has many talents.

No Navajos. No murders. But a very satisfying quiet thriller. It is April, 1975 and Moon Mathias has been treading water as a Managing Editor of a small Colorado newspaper. He discovers that his mother has been hospitalized in Los Angles, which is surprising as she lives in Florida. She has had an heart attack while she was on her way to the Philippines to pick up her granddaughter fathered by Moon's younger brother, Ricky who has recently died in a helicopter crash in South-East Asia where he had a transportation business. Moon had not been aware of his Mother's trip or of his brother's marriage to a Cambodian woman.Despite himself, Moon decides to make a short trip to Manila to pick up the child. Of course, the child has failed to arrive. As Moon waits, he comes into contact with various friends and associates of Ricky who have all heard stories depicting Moon as a hero. This is in stark contrast to Moon's present self-image.From the beginning, it is obvious which journey Moon will have to undertake. This is highlighted as everyday there are headlines about the way Vietnam and Cambodia are heading. Saigon is going to fall and Pol Pot and his comrades are running amok. Just knowing this, the suspense builds up by itself as if from far off Moon can hear the rapids and he has no way to avoid them without losing whatever self respect he still retains.This is a thriller which keeps one engaged without the need for constant action. The threat is enough. It is also a tale of how once others have faith in you, you might have a chance for redemption.Being a Tony Hillerman novel, it is not surprising that the various races and nationalities that Moon encounters are treated with respect though the murderous, genocidal nature of Pol Pot's regime is constantly present.

A friend handed me this book "Finding Moon," and said I should check out Tony Hillerman. Up to this point I hadn't read any of Mr. Hillerman's work. Moon Mathias in the mid-1970s is sent on a mission to rescue his niece from Vietnam as his brother Ricky and his wife have been killed. This is a "stand alone" novel, not part of the detective series. The structure of the novel is set up with the days of the mission, each day a separate chapter except for the end of the novel where the final days are split into parts of the day. Chapter 1: The First Day April 12, 1975 with a quote at the top giving background for information and history. A neat set up of information and then the narrative beginning on the start of each chapter. This novel is a mix of realistic fiction, mystery, and intrigue with a splash of romance. It's light on the romance, and there's enough mystery and action to keep one interested. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I was glad that even though there are references about the Vietnamese war it didn't do a deep dive into military movements and political upheavals. I think Mr. Hillerman did a good job with peeling back some reveals with Moon, Ricky, and his family, too. Kudos to Mr. Hillerman!