A Young Man From Appalachia Leaves Home To Tackle The Challenges Of A New Career In Washington, D.C.
Book Description
MARK PACER is an outsider from Mocking Bird, Georgia, when he arrives in Washington, D.C. for diplomatic training in 1976. His fellow Georgian, Jimmy Carter, is running for president, and the Vietnamese conflict has ended, but legacies remain from war protesters and hippies.Mark's academic credentials from a Southern university are brilliant, but he pronounces words like "my" with an accent as long as the distance from Mocking Bird to the Atlantic Ocean. Plus, in a last, angry meeting with his father, the older man berated Mark for choosing such a "highfalutin'" profession.Maybe his father is right. Not only has Mark broken with his father, but he falls in love with a woman in his Foreign Service class, Reye Quinnell, who surely has no interest in a hillbilly. If that weren't enough, Mark is the chief suspect for an act of racist vandalism against a fellow classmate. After all, he's the one with the Southern accent, right? Should he return to the place he knows best, where his ancestors have lived for generations?Mark works against time to reconcile with his father as well as find the vandalism culprit. And what about his growing friendship with Reye? Soon, training will end. Then he and his colleagues will leave for different countries to begin their careers, separated by thousands of miles.
About the Author
Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Ann Gaylia O'Barr has worked as a computer programmer, a historic preservation planner, and a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. State Department. Her Foreign Service assignments took her to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia, Canada, and the State Department in Washington, D.C. Her fiction combines her knowledge of life in the Middle East and the nation's capital with her Southern background. She loves exploring the impact of recent events on ordinary Americans, especially in their family relationships. Her previous novels include Singing in Babylon, Quiet Deception, Searching for Home, Distant Thunder, A Sense of Mission, and Tender Shadows. She now lives on an island in Puget Sound with her husband and enjoys writing, keeping up with domestic and foreign affairs, and small town fellowship.