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| Category: Fiction:Historical |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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A story of an Irish-American Catholic boy growing up in Sacramento, California, Drunken Duck explores the complexity of human relationships set against a number of unforgettable backdrops. A coming-of-age novel that takes the Reader back into the 1950s and 60s, culminating with the first stages of America's involvement in the Vietnam War, Drunken Duck is told with an acceptance of the human condition, a wee-bit of humor, and a sometimes-chilling stoicism. Living in the tough, predominantly Mexican-American, yet ethnically diverse Alkali Flats neighborhood of Sacramento, Patrick Francis Harrington, just Paddy to his “forever friends,” is a complex little boy, wise beyond his years. Characterized by retribution and redemption, and a continuous struggle with God, his family, a nun at school, and within his neighborhood surroundings, Paddy seeks out and finds love and acceptance from an eclectic group of people, in a world often filled with hypocrisy, drunkenness, violence, and death. A stranger to himself, a boy with a self-confessed half-a-heart and fragmented soul, he nevertheless has the 'gift-of-knowing' as he looks into the eyes of others and sees beyond the ‘identification of differences’ and critical judgments made about color, ethnicity, and outward appearance, to the inner being; the hopes and fears, of the ‘other.’ Later in life, as a Navy SEAL, he travels to Japan and throughout Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Singapore. His childhood experiences of love and loss are mirrored reflections of the passionate sex he shares with the women he loves, and the bloody confrontations he shares, in duels to the death, with a relentless enemy.
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| About the Author | |
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A Navy veteran, Ronald traveled throughout Southeast Asia, serving in Japan, and on the USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War. After earning an MA in Psychology, as VP of Sales of a paint and decorating company, he gave sales management seminars and wrote his company’s ethics and business manuals. |