Path to Freedom (ePub)

"Conrad- I finished reading your manuscript, it was riveting! I think it should be made into a movie. You provided me with an enlightening look into a country I knew very little about, and into a fellow West Pointer who, after reading his work, I feel I could call a friend and a compatriot." - Kevin Mckeown, West Point Class of 1977

Little about Conrad Taylor's primitive upbringing, in a remote mining town carved into the upper reaches of the Amazon jungle, prepared him for a first-of-a-kind scholarship to the United States Military Academy. Merely an extraordinary opportunity for most Americans, it was a life-changer for him. Culture shock hardened the ensuing West Point Experience. Third World politics tested it - severely.

"Path to Freedom" is an inspirational memoir. It charts a sometimes-humorous journey of perseverance, resilience, hope, survival, and love, as its author traverses between Guyana and the highly-regimented United States Military Academy - at the height of the Vietnam War. It has a simple proposition - fly-or-die. The narrative sums up rude awakenings, especially after West Point - because of West Point.

The book describes what happened upon the author's return in 1973 to a government turned repressive, anti-American, and paranoid - overnight. The Soviet-leaning, Cold-War-era dictatorship feared regime change. Its leaders obsessed about him being in cahoots with the United States. His was the impossible task of proving that he was not - or else!

Taylor's journey forged a unique prism through which aficionados of true stories could get a peek at the cultural trauma of emigration, the personal side of Cold-War-era geopolitics, and the mayhem of Third World politics. The view will be nostalgic for some, shocking for many, and enlightening for others.

Like Chris Gardner's "Pursuit of Happyness," which is the basis of a blockbuster film starring Will Smith, "Path to Freedom" has cinematic potential. Its backdrop, which is an underdeveloped Amazonian region of South America and the wind-swept plains of West Point, will enchant - at the very least. Its subtly-threaded love story sets it apart.

More than a memoir, the book's travelogue element - exotic ecology, culture, politics, history, and geography - is captivating. The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction arc of the historically-accurate "Path to Freedom" and its unsophisticated, naive foreigner-at-West Point aspect is riveting.

"Path to Freedom" reads like a novel.