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Overall Summary

Moonglow is a New York Times bestseller. It tells the story of a man’s deathbed confessions, which are told from the perspective of his grandson. From love to suffering and lies, we learn about human emotion and action through true events that are wrapped in fabricated narratives. The book can be hard to follow because it’s not written linearly; rather, it jumps around so you have to pay attention closely to keep up with what’s going on.

The novel Moonglow begins with a man visiting his grandfather on his deathbed. His grandfather is reminiscing about the past and reveals that he was born in South Philadelphia, grew up poor and Jewish, got an engineering degree at Drexel University, enlisted in the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, learned how to be a spy from the Germans whom he captured as a soldier and ultimately became one himself while serving in Europe. The author uses this story to explore themes such as family relationships, coming-of-age stories (the grandfather’s), war stories (WWII) and historical fiction (Von Braun).

During the war, a grandfather returns to America and falls in love with a French immigrant. The woman already had a daughter from her previous marriage, so she became the narrator’s grandmother. The grandfather eventually married this woman and opened an aerospace engineering firm. Unfortunately for him, he was forced to leave his company behind when his wife began suffering mental anguish from living through World War II. He became a salesman as they dealt with mounting medical expenses because of his wife’s mental illness. In an outburst of rage due to stress, he attacked someone at work which led to him being imprisoned for over one year.

A grandfather is in prison, but his brother looks after the daughter he has adopted. After the grandfather gets out of prison, he builds a working model rocket that earns him enough money to buy a house and care for his sick wife. Meanwhile, Sally Sichel moves in with another man who has retired to Florida. The grandfather then falls in love with Sally and moves into her home so they can be together as they both get older. Unfortunately, however, the grandfather soon contracts bone cancer and quickly dies because there are very few people living in Cape Canaveral who can take care of him properly.

The grandfather’s stories about German aerospace technology are fascinating to the narrator. However, they’re tainted by the Nazis’ involvement in this field of study. The narrator struggles with where he should stand on this issue because space travel would not be what it is today without Nazi Germany’s contributions to it. On the other hand, Nazi Germany was responsible for a mass genocide of his people (Jews). It’s an ethical dilemma with no correct moral stance.

The narrator’s mother was involved with a man named Reynard when she was young. They were sexually intimate for some time, but he eventually rejected her and permanently blinded him. Later on, her parents got married in Flushing, Queens in New York City. The narrator’s mother had an affair with the doctor who delivered him and later married him (the doctor). Reynard and the doctor became involved in organized crime based out of Philadelphia. Eventually they were caught by the police; however, due to fear of legal persecution from his past actions, the doctor left without warning or explanation and never returned to his family again. The story ends as it begins: “I sat there listening to my heart beating inside my chest.”

The final story told in the novel is at the grandfather’s funeral. The narrator and his mother admire the grandfather’s things. They find a small model spaceship he built. Inside are small figures of the grandfather, his wife, his daughter, and his grandson. Even though he was a man of few words, it’s clear that the love he felt for his family was immense. Moonglow is a story about mental illness, love, morality during World War II and aerospace engineering as well as how we can’t have good without bad and everything’s interconnectedness to each other like life events being tied together by fate or destiny. It also tells us how proud one should be of their life even if they had traumatic experiences in it.