Undeterred: How One Determined Vietnamese Orphan Carved Out a Place for Himself in America

by Bruce Carlin

Overview

It's a twenty-foot drop off Flower Bridge...

With tanks approaching and bombs exploding mere yards away, five-year-old Long has only moments to decide whether to risk the jump to join his brother in the water below. The boys must leave everything they know in order to survive and unknowingly have embarked on an intense journey, one that will lead to a new life in America.

But even having come so far, the boys will face new perils in the United States and find that the only thing they can depend on is each other. Encountering the indifference and neglect inside a string of foster homes, Long determines that the only way to regain his independence is to earn his own money.

Undeterred is a moving ride through the life of one determined boy who, despite the bigotry and hate he faces, carves out a place for himself in America.

At the end of Undeterred, we share some of Long's powerful investment principles. These principles took many years to develop, and made him the financial success he is today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798985622713
Publisher:	3ninas Publishing
Publication date:	07/14/2022
Pages:	154
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.36(d)

Editorial Reviews

2022-09-17
A young Vietnamese boy flees war-torn Vietnam for the United States and struggles to achieve independence in this novelistic debut biography.

Carlin, an executive in the health care and retail industries, tells the story of his colleague Long and Long’s older brother, Duc, who grew up in Vietnam during the war without parents in a village where this was common; many were the abandoned children of local sex workers and American soldiers. When the North Vietnamese forces overwhelmed Saigon in 1975, the brothers were rescued by U.S. soldiers and flown to America, where they received temporary shelter at Camp Pendleton in California. They were then moved to a series of foster homes, typically families only interested in financial compensation; they were denied affection or hospitality and often made to work like servants; at one point, Long ran away, but he soon returned out of concern for his sibling. Long also experienced sexual abuse in one home, Carlin writes. After Duc died in a car accident, his brother devoted himself to the goal of financial independence, working indefatigably, living frugally, and learning how to invest. The author chronicles Long’s triumph over adversity with clarity. However, the prose lacks style, and it often has a cloying earnestness, as when he describes Long’s astonished reaction to racism in the United States: “Long wondered, why is there hate based on skin color? People are people. Like the fighting years ago in Vietnam, it made no sense to Long.” Long’s life is cinematically eventful; the obstacles he had to overcome as a child were daunting, and the account of his later success is extraordinary; indeed, it’s impossible to read this biography and not be inspired by his perseverance. Nevertheless, the featureless prose in this account isn’t likely to sustain the interest of an audience beyond Long’s family members and friends.

A story of one man’s impressive success that may struggle to find a broad audience.

Kirkus Reviews