A Circle on the Cross

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In 1972, James Good was one of the last American soldiers captured in Vietnam. He has been kept on a farm somewhere in Southeast Asia for twenty years. Late one afternoon he hears the unmistakable drone of a small plane's engine. This is the day of which he has dreamed. He escapes the tiger cage and struggles through the jungle and streams chasing the sound of the engine. Finally, he and the spotter pilot see each other and the pilot leads James to a clearing where he is picked up and taken to safety. As in his dreams, James finds himself walking down a street in his hometown where he locates the father of a fallen comrade to return a personal item belonging to the man's son. Later, James reaches his own home to find that his brother Billy is the only one there to greet him. He learns that his wife has married Billy to maintain the family business, and that they have been raising the son he never knew he had. When James meets his son, Chester, the past runs headlong into the fan blades of the present. Chester has resented not knowing his father, or what really happened to him. James' journey is a story about the human reluctance to give up and its capacity for survival at all costs. James' lessons are our own: that anything is possible if we refuse to quit, if we persevere, if we refuse to forget, if we remember to dream.