Finding Moon, Tony Hillerman (HarperCollins, 1995) **

This novel is about how a very ordinary person deals with an extraordinarily chaotic environment into which he's been suddenly thrust. The setting moves around from the U.S. to the Philippines and then Southeast Asia, back in 1975 when we were about to lose Vietnam and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge were ravaging Cambodia. He's desperately searching for his recently deceased brother's infant daughter in a time and place where the world seems to be coming apart. This novel is quite different from most of Hillerman's novels. There's a whiff of autobiography here...Hillerman recently lost his own brother Barney. Also the main character, Moon Mathias, is an Oklahoma newspaper journalist and ex-soldier who, like Hillerman...sorry Tony... is a man of 'large proportions'. The plot reminded me vaguely of the Wizard of Oz because the three main characters, two male and one female, were all in search of something very personal, they depended on each other, andthey had to make a difficult journey into a bizarre and hostile environment to find what they were looking for. You'll enjoy it.