Kicking the Embers

By: David Lucas

Narrated by: David Lucas

It is 2008. Sam’s dream publishing debut is three years behind him. Now he is a writer without a story. Desperate for inspiration, he takes the opportunity to ghostwrite an old Vietnamese solider’s memoir, only to find that his subject, Mr. Lan, is an intractable communist, whose amazing narrative is rooted in the vilification of Vietnamese emigres, the very people Sam’s debut celebrated.

Retelling Lan’s story—beginning in South Vietnam, 1954—is a creative rejuvenation. As his personal life falls apart, Sam focuses everything on the work, determined to separate the story from the politics. For Lan, the story is the politics.

Safe within his Brooklyn apartment and hipster philosophy, Sam feels at liberty to blur the lines, as he traces Lan’s journey through rice paddies, opium dens and prison cells, amid the tumult of 1960’s Vietnam.

The past starts to threaten the present as Sam is forced to deal with a worldview that, along with the financial crises and the 2008 presidential election, threatens to upend his fragile world.

©2024 David Lucas (P)2025 David Lucas

The story, the audience, the writer?..

The point of view, the identity, the roles, are being shaped in the interchange and I, the reader have no choice, but to become a participant, a fellow traveler in this journey. Hard work, not the typical light entertainment? Indeed, the case! Worth the challenge? Unquestionably! This book offers a very rewarding experience!