While in Darkness There is Light
Buy the Book:Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Abe Books
Black Lawrence Press
Published by: Black Lawrence Press
Release Date: September 3, 2008
Pages: 226
ISBN13: 978-0976899396
Synopsis
In 1970 a group of young men from privileged families were full of optimism about the future until the Vietnam war brought disillusionment crashing down on them. After the Kent State shootings, Kim Haskell finished his first year at University of Denver and flew home to Delaware where he met up with old friend Rich Trapnell who had just completed his finals at Harvard. For both young men, school was out for good. They traveled, first to Kenya and then to Australia, where they settled in Far North Queensland and started a commune called Rosebud Farm.
They wrote to friends, inviting them to visit. One was Harry Reynolds, who had been Rich’s freshman roommate at Harvard. The other was Charlie Dean, recently graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He had been working on McGovern’s campaign for president and after McGovern’s crushing defeat to Nixon in 1972, Charlie, at his brother Howard’s urging, decided to travel the world.
Charlie found his way to Rosebud Farm, where he sojourned before moving on to Southeast Asia. In September 1974, Charlie and traveling companion Neil Sharman disappeared on the Laos side of the Mekong River. Months later it was discovered that they had been taken prisoner by communist Pathet Lao soldiers, marched into the rainforest, and held captive in a crude prison camp for three months before being executed by machine gun fire.
With the perseverance of Charlie’s brother Howard Dean, Charlie’s remains were recovered in 2004 while Howard was a candidate for U.S. President. But questions remained unanswered. What was Charlie doing in Southeast Asia, where fighting continued even though the United States had withdrawn troops? And what happened at the Rosebud Farm commune, where Charlie lived for the year leading up to his death? The research and writing are based on journals, letters, and interviews with the Rosebud farmers and with Dean family members.
Listen to the song, "While in Darkness There is Light," by George Schricker
Watch the Trailer
Praise
"A bittersweet coming-of-age story that wanders from Harvard Yard to the Australian outback to the jungles of Laos, While in Darkness There is Light recaptures some of what was most inspiring and some of what was most heartbreaking about America in the early 1970s. This book is both a celebration and an elegy; it filled me with an enduring sense of wonder and of loss."
–George Howe Colt, author of The Big House
"A well-researched, straightforward recounting of the adventures and misadventures of a group of privileged young expatriates during the Vietnam era. The book explores how with idealism, a deeply engrained sense of entitlement, and, in the case of Charlie Dean, tragic results they tested themselves against the world."
–Laurie Alberts, author of Lost Daughters
"This is an amazing story about a group of young men who were seemingly born with silver spoons in their mouths, attending prep schools, summering in the Hamptons, going to the finest colleges, drinking tea out of fine china with pinkies extended whose families had country club memberships and who, by all means, should have been pure, unadulterated, spoiled snobs. But these young men totally surprised me. These amazing 20-somethings were filled with wanderlust, and they ended up, by their own decisions, on a piece of property in the rain forest of Australia, and they turned it into a working farm visited by hundreds (if not thousands) of similar young folks searching to find themselves. For me, the book was somewhat nostalgic as I was maturing at the same time as time as they were, but never in my wildest dreams would I have left the comforts that they had to toil endlessly in a foreign country. These were extremely intelligent young people, mature for their years, who survived and thrived and had the experience of a lifetime. It is a tale with a tragic ending, but you know that going into the story. It's the events that lead up to that tragic ending that will keep you riveted and entertained."
–L. W. Bryant, Amazon review
"Excellent read! This book is a touching true story of a group of young people winding their way through the tumultuous 1970's. Bryant's penmanship appeals to readers at any time of life, and While in Darkness documents one small web of lives and makes it an epitome of one of America's most trying, resonating decades. Laced with a clinging nostalgia and written with a grace only Louella Bryant could conjure, the book allows the reader to experience with the subjects all the uncertainty, pain, fear, expectation, and hope that comes with youth."
–Carrie Bistline, Amazon review
Excerpt
From the bow of the ferryboat, a lullaby—Non saa laa—sleep, my child, the mother sang. Charlie wondered about the children in Paksan, whether they would survive the civil war. The boys had reminded him of his own brothers. With any luck, he would be back home on Park Avenue by Christmas.
The boat drifted to the riverbank and stopped. Certainly they weren’t in Thakhek yet.
Neil nudged Charlie. “Pathet Lao checkpoint,” he said.
Several brown-skinned men motioned for the passengers to disembark, and Charlie was grateful for a chance to stretch his legs. The men were wearing Cooley caps shaped like wide cones, and each had a machine gun strapped to his back. They looked like a gang of teenagers. When Charlie lifted the camera and snapped a picture, one of the men laid his hand on the barrel of the gun behind him. With the other hand, he reached for the camera.
Charlie had taken some shots of scenery along the Mekong on the film, beautiful temples of Phnom Penh, the Paksan children. He had bought the camera in Japan, the first big expenditure of his life. The camera had kept a visual record of the two months he spent in Japan and the year he had lived at Rosebud Farm. He would not give up the camera.
“Bo,” Charlie said and shook his head. “Bo camera.”
The machine gun suddenly swung from behind the man, rose to his shoulder, pointed at Charlie’s chest. The man was yelling, but Charlie had no idea what he was saying. He shoved Charlie, pushing him away from the boat and into the forest. He twisted his neck and saw the passengers board the ferry again. The mother, hand on her son’s back, went to the bow. As the boat left the shore, she looked at Charlie and mouthed the words pai dee—go in peace.
Neil stumbled behind Charlie, a cone-capped man gripping his arm. Charlie peered into the gloomy thicket in front of him and thought of the Laotian expression, “When the tiger sleeps, don’t wake him.” But it was too late—he had awakened the tiger.
