Gus Lee writes a moving novel that on the surface appears to be about life at West Point in the 1960's. There is a subplot about a cheating scandal, but the novel is about so much more than that. It is about trying to find your place in life. It is about maintaining honor when all about you so many have set their own honor aside. It is about recognizing that your ultimate duty is to be true to yourself. It is about striving to please parents, officers, and friends. It is about love lost and new loves. It is about being raised to be an American in a Chinese family. Essentially, West Point is simply the setting for a novel about life in general. In some ways this novel is a look at the 60's themselves through the eyes of a military cadet who happens to be of Chinese descent. Likely, this novel is semi-autobiographical for Lee, because he writes with a realism and a passion, as well as an understanding of the military terms and abbreviations. In fact, at first I was put off by a glossary of those terms and abbreviations, thinking that a good writer would find a way to explain them without forcing the reader to the back of the book.. by the end of the book I agreed with its inclusion.. there simply was no way to stop and explain those terms everytime one presented itself, and to refuse to use them would have been utterly ridiculous. This was a hard book to finish-- I kept hoping it would end differently, but I would almost bet that this sets the stage for the next novel which will likely take the hero to Vietnam (or maybe not).. I was heartbroken in places for the hero.. Lee didn't pull any punches.Perhaps the most interesting scene for me, and heart wrenching scene,was when Kai prepared to pay his respects to family of a former classmate who had been killed in Vietnam, but is waved off by another cadet and realizes that seeing an oriental face, even in West Point dress uniform, would not have been helpful at that point. By including that moment in time we see that Kai is both on the inside and yet still remains a bit of an outsider, regardless of the fact that the majority of his fellow cadets thinks he is just grand.Really good stuff..
