About this item
Highlights
- Shadows of Saigon is the story of Grady Cordeaux, a 68-year-old loner, Louisiana farmer and Vietnam veteran, who suffers a heart attack.Under heavy sedation he relives his senior year in high school (1970), his first girlfriend, and the incidents that forced him into the Army.
- Author(s): Mark R Anderson
- 286 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Romance
Description
About the Book
The story of Grady Cordeaux, a 68-year-old loner, Louisiana farmer, and Vietnam veteran, who suffers a heart attack and relives his youthful high school romance and a lost love during the Vietnam War.
Book Synopsis
Shadows of Saigon is the story of Grady Cordeaux, a 68-year-old loner, Louisiana farmer and Vietnam veteran, who suffers a heart attack.
Under heavy sedation he relives his senior year in high school (1970), his first girlfriend, and the incidents that forced him into the Army. He relives the trauma, combat, and anxiety he suffered in Vietnam. Most importantly, he relives the love between him and Tien, the daughter of the most prominent businessmen in Southeast Asia. They shared the deepest love, marriage, and a son at the cost of losing her family. In a final attempt to reconcile with her parents they go to her family's restaurant when a VC bomb explodes.
In a strange twist of fate, a Dr. Wellington, of Vietnamese ancestry, sees the photograph of Tien on Grady's nightstand in the hospital. Wellington challenges Grady about the photo.
Can Dr. Wellington help Grady finally let go of the Shadows of Saigon?
Review Quotes
This is a fictional story about an American patriot, Grady Cordeaux. Grady reveals his life's journey to us, retrospectively, through his relationship with a decades-long friend, R.C. Carter.His story, set in the turbulent Vietnam War era and beyond, is one that many Americans can relate to; that is, a rural upbringing, a loving family, high school sweetheart, and finding his post-high school dreams suddenly diverted and out of his control.While describing Grady's army duties, relationships and heroism in combat, the author gives us an unusual but insightful accounting of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a junior non-commissioned officer. Those young men and women came home with mixed emotions; just happy to be alive, dejected, rejected, physically maimed, mentally broken, appreciated and proud. Those experiences shaped a generation of Americans for better or worse.Shadows of Saigon, by this gifted new novelist Mark Anderson, artfully builds on itself page-by-page. You will find yourself playing mind games predicting where Grady's life is headed only to be surprised, elated and sometimes disappointed all in the same spell-binding chapter. You will find it difficult to put this book down."-Marvin Covault, Lt. Gen. US Army, retired. Vietnam 1967/68 and 1971