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ISBN: 1-931010-18-8
392 pp. | paper | $17.00

by Ron Arias

Moving Target is the memoir of journalist Ron Arias. It is an exploration of his childhood, the search for his father, and the fruit of his desire for a connection between his past and present. Arias’s father was a career army man who was held as a POW during the Korean War. After his return to the United States, he rules his family with an iron hand. Eventually, his marriage unravels. Arias’s mother subsequently dies and his father abruptly severs all ties with his son and disappears. Propelled by this and other tragedies in his life, Arias becomes a reporter who covers earthquakes, bombings, and other disasters. During the next fourteen years, he searches for his father only to find that he has died. Arias sets out to learn as much as he can about his father and his experiences in the war, interviewing numerous people who knew him; and in the process, he learns that his father was suspected of being a spy. His father becomes an elusive moving target that he seems to chase throughout his life. Through his extensive research and his job as a reporter of death and destruction, Arias’s connection to his parents intensifies and he begins to understand them in a way that he could not when they were alive.

Ron Arias, a prolific writer of both journalism and creative literature, is currently a senior writer for People magazine. He is the author of The Road to Tamazunchale, a Chicano Classics title that was recently translated into Spanish and released as El camino a Tamazunchale (Bilingual Press 2002).