Read by the wonderful actor B.D. Wong - great voice! Although this is an abridgement the story flowed and was very satisfying. I will be looking for this in book format though to read again.
Kai Ting is a cadet at West Point in the 1960s. He comes to the military academy from his turbulent San Francisco boyhood in the hope of honoring his father, an officer who had fought with Chiang Kai-she's army; of escaping his stepmother, a stern, unfeeling American woman; and above all, of becoming firmly and undeniably American. But as one of the two Asians at the Point and with the shadow of Vietnam hanging over the cadet corps, Kai must walk a precarious tightrope over a lava pit of prejudice and preconceptions. And he plummets into the heart of a cheating scandal, where his survival will depend on his immediate grasp of a new code of behavior, a new tribal etiquette. Here is a powerful story in which a young man struggles to bring together his double heritage and its often conflicting concepts of honor and duty.
Kai Ting is a cadet at West Point in the 1960s. He comes to the military academy from his turbulent San Francisco boyhood in the hope of honoring his father, an officer who had fought with Chiang Kai-she's army; of escaping his stepmother, a stern, unfeeling American woman; and above all, of becoming firmly and undeniably American. But as one of the two Asians at the Point and with the shadow of Vietnam hanging over the cadet corps, Kai must walk a precarious tightrope over a lava pit of prejudice and preconceptions. And he plummets into the heart of a cheating scandal, where his survival will depend on his immediate grasp of a new code of behavior, a new tribal etiquette. Here is a powerful story in which a young man struggles to bring together his double heritage and its often conflicting concepts of honor and duty.
