On rims of empty moons

the long version

Pat McAfee's On Rims of Empty Moons is the sometimes violent, always lonely spiritual journey of a lifetime that takes John McBride from the hardscrabble plains of Texas to the jungles of Vietnam. It's a bruising trip that too many tough but unprepared young men from the West have taken. The lucky ones came home alive. The luckiest came having learned the hard way what is most important in life - a deep and abiding love of the land, a woman and a family - simple values that transcend national borders, political empires, generations.