PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance

Book excerpt: If you love nonfiction, which reads like a novel, multiple award-winning "PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance" is for you. The Smithsonian Institution displays the inspirational memoir in its Anacostia Museum Library. Little about Conrad Taylor's upbringing in a remote mining town in Guyana, South America, prepared him for West Point - at the height of the Vietnam War. An extraordinary opportunity for most, the highly-regimented United States Military Academy was a life-changer for him. Enduring culture shock and surviving rude awakenings hardened the rigorous West Point Experience. And, Third World politics after West Point - because of West Point - tested it severely. The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction memoir has a simple proposition. Fly-or-die!" PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance" describes what happened upon Taylor's return to a government turned repressive, anti-American, and paranoid - overnight. The Soviet-leaning, Cold-War-era dictatorship feared regime change. Its power-hungry leaders obsessed about him being a spy for the United States. His was the impossible task of proving that he was not - or else! The historically-accurate, coming-of-age book provides a unique prism through which to see the cultural trauma of emigration, the unique experience that is West Point, the personal side of Cold-War-era geopolitics, and the mayhem of Third World politics. The view will be nostalgic for some, shocking to many, and enlightening for others. Its subtly-threaded love story will enchant - at the very least. The Smithsonian Institution archives PATH to FREEDOM: My Story of Perseverance in its Anacostia Museum Library for the book's reference value. The renowned research complex selected the memoir for its insights about the history and culture of black people in the Western Hemisphere.