The Foreign Service Journal, November 2012

42 NOVEMBER 2012 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Cooper’s Promise: A Novel Timothy Jay Smith, Owl Canyon Press, 2012, $16.95, paperback, 228 pages. Cooper Chance, an army sharpshooter and deserter, is recruited to fight in an African country tormented by civil war. Though Cooper is a stoic and hard- fighting soldier, the “gritty world of thugs, prostitutes and corrupt cops” has left him yearning for one thing: home. The catch is that imprisonment awaits him there, and his acute claustrophobia makes that an impossible choice. So he bides his time, trading diamonds to survive, and has a love affair with a deceitful young merchant. Following the discovery of huge oil reserves, the CIA offers Cooper a way home without jail time if he undertakes a risky, high-stakes mission. He balks, but then the teenage prostitute he has promised to save is trafficked and disappears. Hoping to rescue her, Cooper agrees to the mission, which he carries out with unexpected consequences. An author and screenwriter, Smith is no stranger to the world of Cooper Chance. He has traveled extensively, encountering everyone from Polish cops to arms dealers and child prostitutes. Among his many adventures, he managed to land himself in an African jail by stowing away aboard a “devil’s barge” for three days. Timothy Jay Smith resides in Paris with his partner of 30 years, a former Foreign Service Reserve officer and retired Peace Corps chief financial officer. Smith’s screenplay for Cooper’s Promise is currently under consideration by an Oscar-winning British producer. Black Orchid Blues Persia Walker, Akashik, 2011, $15.95/ paperback, 270 pages; $8.95/ Kindle Edition. Harlem in the 1920s comes alive in Persia Walker’s Nero Award-nominated murder mystery, Black Orchid Blues . Young society columnist Lanie Price wit- nesses the violent kidnapping of a sensu- ous 6’3” chanteuse, “Black Orchid,” then is thrust into the conflict herself by a grisly surprise on her doorstep. The temperature rises as the death count increases; Lanie butts heads with her editor, and the kidnapper’s motives grow increasingly bizarre. A motley crew of finely developed characters spices up the sophisticated plotline, and both flourish in Walker’s vision of the era and Harlem’s gay underworld. The richly construed setting is part of the magic. Publisher’s Weekly calls the feisty Lanie a brilliant heroine in this “dark, sexy” novel, careening around plot twists and turns with style. First a journalist, now an author and diplomat, Persia Walker is a New York native. She received a scholarship to Swarthmore College at 16 and attained her master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University. She joined the Foreign Service in 2011 and is now posted in Saõ Paulo. She has written two other novels, Harlem Redux (Blood Vintage Press, 2011) and Darkness and the Devil Behind Me (Blood Vintage Press, 2008). Her short story, “Such a Lucky, Pretty Girl,” is featured in the collection, The Blue Religion (Back Bay Books, 2008). The Wind Will Yet Sing Gordon Young, Xlibris, 2011, $19.99, paperback, 249 pages. The Wind Will Yet Sing is a fictionalized account of the Ku-lao Lahu tribe who inhabit the remote mountain jungles of northernThailand. The year is 1932, and the tribe’s peaceful life has been shattered. Their existence threatened by outside aggressors, the tribe is forced to defend itself and its ancestral traditions. The story is based on true events in the lives of these mysteri- ous people, virtually untouched by modernity. The people and their beliefs, conversation, humor, reasoning and way of life are all portrayed authentically by Gordon Young, the son of mission- ary parents who lived in the China-Burma border region. Young brings the images and sounds of the mountain landscape alive, as well. This is a beautifully written story about a secluded, artful and intelligent people, who constantly migrate through the moun- tains to preserve their faith, ancestral heritage, hunting tech- niques and morals—and, above all, their “peace and freedom.” Born to Baptist missionary parents in Banna, China, in 1927, Gordon Young had the unique opportunity to hunt with the Lahu-Na tribal boys at the age of 10, learning their ways, their hunting methods and their language. This novel is based on that experience. Young is a retired FSO with USAID. He has also pub- lished a biography of a Lahu tribesma n (see p. 27) a nd a memoir (see p. 39).