Michael Chabon’s new book, “Moonglow,” sat around the house for almost a month before I could bring myself to finish it. Chunks at a time, I had fallen into his story and wondered, “Is this part true? Could it have happened that way?”

Soldier, engineer, and rocket enthusiast, Chabon’s grandfather married a Jewish Frenchwoman who barely survived WWII. Her bouts of madness, esp. the obsession with the “Skinless Horse,” tested the husband’s and daughter’s love at times, but the family held together, and what a crew it was. In this novel/memoir Chabon spends the final week of his grandfather’s life listening to the passions and misadventures of a man whose war included the accidental discovery of hidden V-2 rockets-but where was Werner von Braun?

His memories unleashed and enhanced by powerful pain medication, Grandfather spins remarkable tales, leaving those of us who grew up in the space race 50’s and 60’s begging for more. And in every setting, I felt like a fly on the wall-in the German forests, in a New York apartment, in the Florida of rocket science conferences and retirement communities. Reading Chabon’s novels is really a matter of traveling first class in his imagination; he’s a wonderful writer who deserves your attention.