The Dream of the Red Road

Download or read book The Dream of the Red Road written by Scott Ely and published by Livingston Press (AL). This book was released on 2008 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When Pender Hartwell, an infantryman sickened by the war, deserts to the North Vietnamese, he was put in the hands of an intelligence officer who taught him Vietnamese through country's the epic love poem, The Tale of Kieu. Though Pender eventually helped translate captured American documents, they were of no significance because the North Vietnamese never trusted him. Isolated, he found himself attracted to a girl who daily walked a nearby red dirt road, though he never spoke with her." "Long after the war is over Mr. Chau falls out of favor and disappears, and the North Vietnamese kick Pender out, so he returns to Mississippi to claim his decaying ante-bellum family home. No one in the tiny community of Egypt Ridge is happy with Pender's presence, particularly the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy, for he is the recipient of a dishonorable discharge and has been stripped of his medals. Still, he starts to court his old girl friend, Miranda, wanting to fall in love with her but unsure whether he can." "Having memorized much of The Tale of Kieu he uses the poem to call up memories of the girl on the red road, and he's consequently caught between the love he wants for Miranda and his idealized love for a girl he's seen only from a distance. With the help of two Montagnard refugees he repairs the family home and struggles against attempts, both by persuasion and by violence, to drive him out of the house and out of Mississippi."--BOOK JACKET.