The Last Repatriate

Fiction. Asian American Studies. In 1953, after the end of the Korean War, 23 POWs refused to repatriate to America. THE LAST REPATRIATE tells the story of Theodore Dickerson, a prisoner who eventually returns to his home in Virginia in the midst of the McCarthy Era. He is welcomed back as a hero, though he has not returned unscathed. The lasting effects of the POW camp and troubles with his ex-fiancée complicate his new marriage as he struggles to readjust to the Virginia he holds dear.

"A harrowing story rendered in balletic prose, THE LAST REPATRIATE draws us inside a war of the body and of the heart-a confirmation of Salesses's inventive, ambitious, big-hearted brilliance."—Laura van den Berg

"Matthew Salesses is a writer to embrace. In their beauty, strangeness, and heart, his fictions are a gift."—Paul Yoon

"Salesses's examination of the troubled mind of a Korean War POW returning home is pensive and brooding. A subtly painful psychological journey."—James Franco