What We Inherit
A Secret War and a Family's Search for Answers
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Narrated by:
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Jessica Pearce Rotondi
About this listen
In the wake of her mother's death, Jessica Pearce Rotondi uncovers boxes of letters, declassified CIA reports, and newspaper clippings that bring to light a family ghost: her uncle Jack, who disappeared during the CIA-led "Secret War" in Laos in 1972. The letters lead her across Southeast Asia in search of the truth that has eluded her family for decades.
On the night of March 29, 1972, Jack's plane vanishes over the mountains bordering Vietnam. The crash eerily echoes the one Jack's father, Ed Pearce, survived over Germany in World War II, when Ed parachuted out of a burning plane before being captured and sent to Stalag 17 prison camp.
Years later, Ed will become convinced that his son is still alive and that the US government he fought for is lying to him. What We Inherit is Rotondi's story of her own hunt for answers as she retraces her grandfather's journey to Laos in search of his son.
An excavation of intergenerational trauma on a personal and national scale, What We Inherit reveals the power of a father's refusal to be silenced and a daughter's quest to rediscover her voice in the wake of loss.
©2020 Jessica Pearce Rotondi (P)2020 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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"Jessica Pearce Rotondi brilliantly probes the mysteries of a secret war while simultaneously exploring the secrets of her own family, to give us a book about coming to terms with many kinds of loss. Exceptional." (Salman Rushdie, Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight's Children)
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- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
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Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
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The House at Sugar Beach
- A Memoir
- By: Helene Cooper
- Narrated by: Helene Cooper
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.
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Can't recommend it
- By Taryn on 03-25-16
By: Helene Cooper
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Something Fierce
- Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter
- By: Carmen Aguirre
- Narrated by: Carmen Aguirre
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Carmen Aguirre was six-year-old when she and her family fled to Canada following General Augusto Pinochet’s violent 1973 coup in Chile. She was only eleven-years-old when her mother and stepfather joined the resistance movement and returned to South America, taking Carmen and her sister went with them. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.
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revolutionary read
- By David Brown on 04-05-18
By: Carmen Aguirre
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Places and Names
- On War, Revolution, and Returning
- By: Elliot Ackerman
- Narrated by: Elliot Ackerman, Mark Deakins
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Toward the beginning of Places and Names, Elliot Ackerman sits in a refugee camp in Turkey, across the table from a man named Abu Hassar, who fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq, and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky. At first, Ackerman pretends to be a journalist, but after establishing a rapport with Abu Hassar, he takes a risk by revealing to him that in fact he was a Marine special operation officer. Ackerman then draws the shape of the Euphrates River on a large piece of paper, and his one-time adversary quickly joins him in the game of filling in the map.
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A crazy ride through the Mideast.
- By Kent Prochazka on 12-05-19
By: Elliot Ackerman
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The Cut Out Girl
- A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found
- By: Bart van Es
- Narrated by: Bart van Es
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: A young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war and after? So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life and change it.
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a powerful & unique work on the Holocaust
- By D. Littman on 03-06-19
By: Bart van Es
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Sudden Threat
- Threat, Book 1
- By: A. J. Tata
- Narrated by: Alexander Cendese
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In December 2001, CIA paramilitary operative Matt Garrett is mysteriously pulled from Pakistan as he closes in for the kill of Al Qaeda senior leadership and is reassigned to a low-profile mission in the Philippines. But as he sifts through the wreckage of a downed U.S. C-130 cargo plane in the tangled jungle, he finds a dead U.S. Special Forces paratrooper who is not supposed to be there. Matt is quickly thrown into a contest of wits and resiliency in the uncharted rainforests of Mindanao.
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Lots of action with a very weak plot
- By Wayne on 11-19-17
By: A. J. Tata
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Black Dog of Fate
- A Memoir
- By: Peter Balakian
- Narrated by: Peter Balakian
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians.
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Great book!
- By Lm on 06-27-13
By: Peter Balakian
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Apocalypse Child
- A Life in End Times - a Memoir
- By: Flor Edwards
- Narrated by: Flor Edwards
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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For the first 13 years of her life, Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God. The group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that, as God's chosen people, they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would envelop the rest of the world in 1993. Flor would be 13 years old. The group's charismatic leader, Father David, kept the family on the move, from Los Angeles to Bangkok to Chicago, where they would eventually disband, leaving Flor to make sense of the foreign world of mainstream society around her.
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A truly unique background and story
- By Asaph on 04-13-18
By: Flor Edwards
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The Glass Palace
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 17 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her.
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I struggled to finish... enough said.
- By Ty on 05-02-10
By: Amitav Ghosh
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The Corpse Washer
- By: Sinan Antoon
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Young Jawad, born to a traditional Shi'ite family of corpse washers and shrouders in Baghdad, decides to abandon the family tradition, choosing instead to become a sculptor, to celebrate life rather than tend to death. He enters Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts in the late 1980s, in defiance of his father's wishes and determined to forge his own path. But the circumstances of history dictate otherwise.
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Gorgeous story with talented narration
- By N. Barnes on 03-11-18
By: Sinan Antoon
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
- A Memoir of Africa
- By: Peter Godwin
- Narrated by: Peter Godwin
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.
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Worth the listen.
- By SEE on 09-06-21
By: Peter Godwin
What listeners say about What We Inherit
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Elizabeth D. McNamee
- 05-19-20
A riveting and emotionally-wrought journey
What We Inherit is an exquisite story that traverses a grieving daughter's loss, a family's hidden saga, and the landscape of a country's secret war. Jessica Pearce Rotondi -- my dear friend and personal role model -- recounts how, in the days after losing her mother to cancer, she uncovers her family's decades-long search for an uncle who went MIA in Laos in 1972. The discovery sends her searching for answers, and the journey is one of personal and historical reckoning. Told with poignancy and grace, this story will resonate for anyone who has lost a loved one and been left with unanswered questions.
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- M. Cooper
- 05-05-20
Incredible story, storytelling and narration.
This is one of the best books I’ve read in years, combining an unnerving blend of honesty, heartbreak, and talent. The author is an incredible storyteller, the story itself is remarkable, and I’m touched by the strength of the family it depicts. A strong recommendation to all.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-22-21
Fantastic
This book transported and riveted me—a must-read/listen. So grateful to Jess for telling her story!
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- Michael R. Moore
- 08-26-24
Thoughtful book
It was wonderful to hear Jessica read her own words, since this was such an important, personal book. My husband flew EC 47’s in Laos in 1973, and we were lucky to have him survive. However, the pain of the Secret War and the great losses in Laos , never left him. He lost his crew in Laos, and the story has never been completed. My daughter is researching about that crash ( she has actually met Jessica).
Bravo to you Jessica for sharing this story- I am hoping that you have some peace for you and your family.
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- DPP
- 05-15-20
An excellent personal history of the Vietnam War.
This book is a unique angle on the Vietnam War. The narrator takes you along on her journey as she uncovers the mystery of what happened to her uncle after his plane was shot down on Laos. The story switches very effectivly from past to present to tie everything together and has a very heartfelt conclusion. The author reads the book and she is a pleasure to listen to!
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- mkCAVANAUGH
- 04-21-20
Family memoir, military service, Laos 1970s
Captivating, suspenseful saga of one family’s loyalty and perseverance in the face of enormous tragedy and the unbreakable bonds of family hold true through decades and generations. . .a tale of grit and purpose read with great tenderness and love. VERY highly recommend.
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- Taylor Moyer
- 08-01-20
Great Book
Edwin Jack Pearce is from my hometown. Reading about the faith, determination and persistence the Pearce family had in bringing Jack home was astounding. Throughly enjoyed hearing Jessica share the story and her emotion throughout the reading. Highly recommend.
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