Two Souls Indivisible: The Friendship That Saved Two POWs in Vietnam - Couverture rigide

Hirsch, James S.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0618273484 ISBN 13 : 9780618273485

Editeur : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004

Synopsis

James Hirsch recounts one of the great friendships of the twentieth century forged in one of the most horrific settings that century produced--a North Vietnamese POW camp its inmates called the Zoo. One prisoner, Fred Cherry, was a pioneering air force pilot and the first black officer captured by the North Vietnamese. The other, a young navy flier named Porter Halyburton, was a racist southerner who doubted that a black man could even be a pilot. Their captors threw them into the same fetid cell, believing that their antipathy toward each other would break them both. But Cherry and Halyburton overcame their initial suspicions and saved each other's lives.
When Halyburton first saw him, Cherry was a wreck. One arm, damaged in his plane crash, hung uselessly at his side. He hadn't bathed in weeks, and he could barely walk. In his own mind, Cherry was steeling himself for death. Halyburton was also weakening, emotionally battered from the interrogations and isolation that his sheltered life had not prepared him for. He had to learn how to endure, or he would become one of the incoherent wraiths who haunted the Zoo.
Halyburton and Cherry became legendary among fellow POWs for the singular friendship that enabled them to overcome prodigious suffering and unspeakable torture. Hirsch weaves through this account a surprising, sometimes shocking view of the toll these men's captivity took on their loved ones. While Cherry's family was sundered by his absence, Halyburton's bond with his wife, Marty, endured and deepened. We see her receive the news of her husband's death, and we share her mingled elation and fear when she later learns that he is in fact alive and imprisoned. We also witness her unlikely rise to a leading role in the battle to bring the POWs home.
Often inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking, Two Souls Indivisible shows how trust and hope can cheat death, and how good people can achieve greatness in hellish circumstances.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

James Hirsch recounts one of the great friendships of the twentieth century forged in one of the most horrific settings that century produced--a North Vietnamese POW camp its inmates called the Zoo. One prisoner, Fred Cherry, was a pioneering air force pilot and the first black officer captured by the North Vietnamese. The other, a young navy flier named Porter Halyburton, was a racist southerner who doubted that a black man could even be a pilot. Their captors threw them into the same fetid cell, believing that their antipathy toward each other would break them both. But Cherry and Halyburton overcame their initial suspicions and saved each other's lives.
When Halyburton first saw him, Cherry was a wreck. One arm, damaged in his plane crash, hung uselessly at his side. He hadn't bathed in weeks, and he could barely walk. In his own mind, Cherry was steeling himself for death. Halyburton was also weakening, emotionally battered from the interrogations and isolation that his sheltered life had not prepared him for. He had to learn how to endure, or he would become one of the incoherent wraiths who haunted the Zoo.
Halyburton and Cherry became legendary among fellow POWs for the singular friendship that enabled them to overcome prodigious suffering and unspeakable torture. Hirsch weaves through this account a surprising, sometimes shocking view of the toll these men's captivity took on their loved ones. While Cherry's family was sundered by his absence, Halyburton's bond with his wife, Marty, endured and deepened. We see her receive the news of her husband's death, and we share her mingled elation and fear when she later learns that he is in fact alive and imprisoned. We also witness her unlikely rise to a leading role in the battle to bring the POWs home.
Often inspiring, sometimes heartbreaking, Two Souls Indivisible shows how trust and hope can cheat death, and how good people can achieve greatness in hellish circumstances.

Revue de presse

"A moving story of two men whose courage, sense of duty and love proved greater than the depravity of their captors. I highly recommend it." --John McCain, US Senator and author of FAITH OF MY FATHERS

"This is a shattering account of the long, horrific ordeal of two very brave POWs. Beyond that, it is a genuinely inspiring testament to our shared human capacity to find friendship and love and forgiveness and understanding and even hope in the very furnaces of hell." -- Tim O'Brien, author of THE THINGS THEY CARRIED and JULY, JULY

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Date d'édition: 2004
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0618273484
• ISBN 13: 9780618273485
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 288
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Yeepin GmbH; 492000000000; sunshine12232@outlook.com; ; Alleestr.11; Kaiserslautern; Rheinland-Pfalz; 67655; Allemagne