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"Seoul" novel synopsis
Posted on: 2007-01-06 22:13:20 For anyone who has experienced Korea in this century, Whalen M. Wehry's book SEOUL, A Novel of Korea, may be a part of you. The work is the former Pacific Stars and Stripes Korea News Bureau chief's third historical novel of Korea. SEOUL transcends the differences of race and cultures. The cross-cultural story is about cultures, armies and personalities clashing in the poignant and often brutal rites of passage that preceded today's international multi-ethnic diversity. From the arrival of Americans to repatriate the defeated legions of Japan, down the peninsula with the invading Soviets in the north, to the Chinese human waves hurling themselves into the UN forces of the Korean War, the author of COREAN DAWN and COREAN DUSK has exquisitely textured blend of human earthiness and savagery, noble deeds and emotions, hope, despair, violence and rebirth in an East-meets-West saga. With a complex international cast of strong-willed soldiers, resourceful thieves, scheming pimps, spies, vicious bigots, heroes and villains, SEOUL is woven with the richness of exotic cultures and driven by the aims, needs and miscommunications of its characters, world powers and fate itself. For anyone who has experienced Korea in this century, Whalen M. Wehry's book SEOUL, A Novel of Korea, may be a part of you. The work is the former Pacific Stars and Stripes Korea News Bureau chief's third historical novel of Korea. SEOUL transcends the differences of race and cultures. The cross-cultural story is about cultures, armies and personalities clashing in the poignant and often brutal rites of passage that preceded today's international multi-ethnic diversity. From the arrival of Americans to repatriate the defeated legions of Japan, down the peninsula with the invading Soviets in the north, to the Chinese human waves hurling themselves into the UN forces of the Korean War, the author of COREAN DAWN and COREAN DUSK has exquisitely textured blend of human earthiness and savagery, noble deeds and emotions, hope, despair, violence and rebirth in an East-meets-West saga. With a complex international cast of strong-willed soldiers, resourceful thieves, scheming pimps, spies, vicious bigots, heroes and villains, SEOUL is woven with the richness of exotic cultures and driven by the aims, needs and miscommunications of its characters, world powers and fate itself. There is the lowly half-caste Su Gil Mulvany clawing a place of wealth and respect for himself between Westerners and Koreans. Readers will meet the tough, beautiful and tragic Pae Na Na, daughter of a Korean freedom fighter, trapped by her own past and the cataclysmic interests of cultures and nations, standing tragically alone with her half-American child in a war-torn land without hope. Here is the decorated, spiritually bankrupt American Sergeant Jake Rand, his soul healing from World War II as Korea and Koreans begin to hope and heal. Rand is driven to another last rampage of vengeance and destruction when invading communists kill his Korean fiancé, then finds ultimate redemption, rebirth and belonging in the Land of Morning Calm. |