The All-American

A Novel

By: Joe Milan Jr.

Narrated by: Jason Vu

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance; he can't even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player.

So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the US government to deport him to South Korea, he's forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life. One mishap leads to another, and as an outsider, Bucky has to fall back on not just his raw physical strength, but resources of character and attitude he didn't know he had. In an expat bar in Seoul, in the bleak barracks of his Korean military, on a remote island where an erratic sergeant fights a shadow-war with North Korean spies, and in the remote town where he seeks out his drunken, indebted biological father, Bucky has to assemble the building blocks of a new language and stubbornly rebuild himself from scratch. That means managing his ego, insecurities, sexual desires, family legacies, and allegiances in order to make it back home—wherever that might be—and determine who he is to himself, who he is to others, and what kind of man he wants to become.

©2023 Joe Milan Jr (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Interesting storyline

Easy listen and entertaining. Could have done without swearing but enjoyed book. I would recommend listening to it

The best memoir since Born A Crime!

I fell in the with main character and the adversity he faced time after time after time. Imagine being 17 or 19 ;) and going though these trials. This is one of the most triumphant coming of age stories Iv’e ever had the privilege to participate in. The first 4-5 chapters I was skeptical with all the deep football talk and family mental illness suicide stuff. But once we hit chapter 5 this is 300 pages of gold. Bucky becomes someone I want to know in real life. I tore through this in under 12 hours split between 2 days which is rare for me. I highly recommend this book… especially if you enjoyed Trevor Noah in Born a Crime… and if you read this haven’t read Born a Crime go do that next. Easily my favorite 2 memoirs of all time.