Dogtag Summer
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Twelve-year-old Tracy-or Tuyet-has always felt different. The villagers
in Vietnam called her con-lai, or "half-breed," because her father was
an American GI. And she doesn't fit in with her adoptive family in
California, either. But when Tracy and a friend discover a soldier's
dogtag hidden among her father's things, it sets her past and her
present on a collision course. Where should her broken heart come to
rest? In a time and place she remembers only in her dreams? Or among the
people she now calls family? Partridge's sensitive portrayal of a girl
and her family grappling with the complicated legacy of war is as timely
today as the events were decades ago.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gripping yet tender coming-of-age story reveals multiple nuanced perspectives of the Vietnam War and its aftermath in the summer of 1980. A backfiring school bus triggers a series of flashbacks for sixth-grader Tracy. Partridge smoothly interlaces memories of Tracy's childhood as a "con lai" (half-blood) in wartime Vietnam, where her American heritage endangered her Vietnamese family, and her present-day life as the adopted daughter of a Vietnam veteran who is dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. When Tracy and her best friend, Stargazer the child of hippie, war-protesting parents discover a dogtag in her father's ammo box, the event sets off an unexpected chain of events in both families, leading to excruciating memories, painful misunderstandings, and compassionate insights. Partridge delicately portrays Tracy's struggle to reconcile her last, harrowing memory of her biological mother and her relationship with her loving, adoptive mother, who tries to understand the ghostly memories haunting her daughter and husband. Appendixes include interviews in which Partridge addresses historical questions, as well as a teacher's guide for using this book in a curriculum about Vietnam. Powerful historical fiction. Ages 8 12.
