If I had to reduce it to one sentence, I would say this book is about living the American Dream. It is about growing up without electricity, running water, or indoor plumbing. It is about being poor but not realizing that you are because everyone around you is in the same situation. It is about one of the millions of families that come to America legally every year and asks for nothing but an opportunity—an opportunity to get an education, an opportunity to work, an opportunity to serve the great country that they have accepted as their own. It's about surviving the Vietnam War as a grunt with your sanity intact. In this book, the author tells a story of how he went from working full-time nightshifts while in high school to earning a master's degree. He went from a Private to Lieutenant Colonel and to Command a Squadron of over four hundred Marines. How he emerged from not speaking a word of English and delivering newspapers to writing this manuscript. How he went from arriving in this country with nothing but the clothing on his back to a solid military career and living the American Dream.
