Part memoir, part investigative journalism, and completely engrossing,
What We Inherit is not a book you'll be forgetting anytime soon.
--Oprah Magazine
Exceptional. --Salman Rushdie
In the wake of her mother's death, Jessica Pearce Rotondi uncovers boxes
of letters, declassified CIA reports, and newspaper clippings that bring
to light a family ghost: her uncle Jack, who disappeared during the
CIA-led "Secret War" in Laos in 1972. The letters lead her across
Southeast Asia in search of the truth that has eluded her family for
decades. What she discovers takes her closer to the mother she lost and
the mysteries of a secret war that changed the rules of engagement
forever.
In 1943, 19-year-old Edwin Pearce jumps from a burning B-17 bomber over
Germany. Missing in action for months, his parents finally learn he is a
prisoner of war in Stalag 17. Ed survives nearly three years in prison
camp and a march across the Alps before returning home.
Ed's eldest son and namesake, Edwin "Jack," follows his father into the
Air Force. But on the night of March 29, 1972, Jack's plane vanishes
over the mountains bordering Vietnam and Ed's past comes roaring into
the present.
In 2009, Ed's granddaughter, Jessica Pearce Rotondi, is grieving her
mother's death when she stumbles across declassified CIA documents,
letters, and maps that reveal her family's decades-long search for Jack.
What We Inherit is Rotondi's story of her own hunt for answers as she
retraces her grandfather's 1973 path across Southeast Asia in search of
his son.
An excavation of inherited trauma on a personal and national scale,
What We Inherit reveals the power of a father's refusal to be silenced
and a daughter's quest to rediscover her voice in the wake of loss. As
Rotondi nears the last known place Jack was seen alive, she grows closer
to understanding the mystery that has haunted her family for
generations--and the destructive impact of a family secret so big it
encompassed an entire war.
