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WHAT WE INHERIT

Name: WHAT WE INHERIT
Author: Jessica Pearce Rotondi
ISBN: 978-1-951213-07-7

A SECRET WAR AND A FAMILY'S SEARCH FOR ANSWERS

by Jessica Pearce Rotondi ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

An inspiring and revealing story of one family’s pursuit of the truth about their son.

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A debut memoir about a family who searched for their loved one for decades.

Until her mother’s death, Brooklyn-based writer and editor Rotondi knew very little about Uncle Jack, who disappeared in Laos in 1972 and “stayed missing” for 36 years. The author discovered boxes of letters and declassified documents that showed decades of research into his whereabouts, much of it conducted by her grandparents, Ed and Rosemary. Ed, who had been a POW during World War II, was not convinced when the American government told him his son had died in a plane crash over Laos, so he spent the rest of his life digging for the truth. Eventually, Rotondi’s mother took up the search, followed by the author. As part of their search, Ed and Rosemary requested packets of information under the Freedom of Information Act, attended hearings, protested the lack of government concern about the POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia, and clung to the belief that their son was still alive. Ed even visited Laos but was unable to access the crash site. Years later, Rotondi and a friend followed his footsteps, gathering shreds of information from the locals, many of whom were nervous about talking openly with Americans. The author’s precise attention to detail conjures up the jungle heat and humidity as well as the pervasive poverty that plagues Laos, and she effectively captures her family’s daily struggle and the toll their quest took on their personal health. The narrative is moving and dramatic as the author shares the alternately heartbreaking and triumphant moments of this intergenerational search for the truth. At intervals in the well-written text, Rotondi also shares details about the CIA’s “Secret War” in Laos, where, “between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped two million tons of cluster bombs…a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.”

An inspiring and revealing story of one family’s pursuit of the truth about their son.

Pub Date: April 21, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-951213-07-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Unnamed Press

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

Categories:

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)