The All-American: A Novel
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
“Joe Milan Jr. has rocketed himself into the literary stratosphere.” —Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Introducing a character as viscerally believable and unforgettable as any in fiction, The All-American is a triumph—full of energy, dark humor, suspense, and hard-won wisdom.
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 U.S. 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The American dream takes a sudden turn in Joe Milan Jr.’s sweeping debut novel. High school football player Bucky has lived in the U.S. with his adoptive family since he was a baby, so he’s absolutely bewildered when he discovers he’s not a U.S. citizen. Deported back to South Korea—where he doesn’t know the language or where to find his father—Bucky embarks on a strange journey that becomes even stranger when he’s forced into the country’s mandatory military service. Milan does a fantastic job with his sympathetic young hero, making Bucky bright enough to navigate his circumstances but too young and inexperienced to get himself out of them. Even when the story borders on farce, the consequences always feel real. This remarkable novel mixes the dark comedy of Catch-22 with the chaotic reality of today’s immigration policies.
Customer Reviews
The All American by Joe Milan Jr.
This book featured a young, Korean boy living in America trying to be an all star football athlete. But that all changed when he got shipped to South Korea, having to do his duties to avoid being an army drifter.