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Dogtag Summer

Elizabeth Patridge

“This gripping yet tender coming-of-age story reveals multiple nuanced perspectives of the Vietnam War and its aftermath in the summer of 1980. Powerful historical fiction.” -Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

 

From the author’s webpage: 

 

Tracy-or Tuyet-always knew she was different. The villagers in Vietnam scornfully called her con-lai, or “half-breed,“because her father was an American GI. Yet she’s not sure she fits in with her new family in California, either.

 

When Tracy finds a soldier’s dogtag hidden by her adoptive father (a Vietnam vet himself), she’s haunted by memories from her life in Vietnam: hiding from Vietcong soldiers, being dragged away from her village by a GI, the American Boss Man’s knife at her throat.

 

Tracy struggles to reconcile her harrowing memories of Vietnam with her life in California. Where is home when you’re a child of war, caught between two countries, two identities? When is love enough to carry you through what you’ve discovered about your past? About your father’s past?