Dogtag Summer

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Dogtag Summer

During the summer before 8th grade, Tracy starts having flashbacks to her childhood in Vietnam. Her adoptive parents have pictures of her arrival in the USA as a tiny 6 year old in 1975, but before that time, she has only an empty place inside her memories. As she and her friend Stargazer search in her garage, they find an ammo box and Army dogtags.

Now she dreams of her mother being away at DaNang as a laundry worker for the Americans, her uncle gone as a Viet Cong soldier, soldiers from both sides searching her grandmother’s hut in the jungle, families divided by war. How can she ask her adoptive father about the dogtags with another man’s name when he never talks about being in Vietnam?

As a Vietnamese-American, she was shunned by village neighbors and is taunted by California classmates. Sometimes, things are too quiet at her house now, but Stargazer’s easy-going parents accept her and welcome her to their place in the forest. When his peace-loving father sees the dogtags and calls the US soldiers in Vietnam “babykillers,” Tracy knows that she will have to be brave enough to ask her Dad about the past, about the dogtags, about why she came to this family in the US instead of another.

A story from the heart to go with the history book facts, readers will walk and dream with Tracy through that dogtag summer, through the questions and answers to better understanding of a difficult chapter in America’s history.

Recommended by: Katy Manck, Librarian-at-Large (retired academic/corporate/school librarian), Gilmer, Texas, USA

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