Full Circle: A Refugee's Tale - Paperback

by Joe Vitovec (Author)

FULL CIRCLE takes the reader on a journey that begins with a boy in 1938 in a small town in Czechoslovakia and ends some fifty years later with that boy, now a middle-aged man, returning to his childhood home. What transpires in the intervening years is the heart of this politically and emotionally complex story, one with which many will be able to relate, while others will learn from and perhaps consider the current global refugee crisis with fresh insight and compassion. It is not a tale any reader will likely forget.
The story takes the reader through the Second World War and the ensuing Cold War and then thrusts the young man into the cauldron of refugee camps after he escapes his country following a communist coup d'etat in his native land. A myopic world, too preoccupied with the euphoria of victory over the Nazis and the darkening clouds of the Cold War to see the plight of the displaced, soon puts him to the test. In the ruins of post-war Germany, the sewers of Paris, and the refugee camps of Italy, he comes to realize that freedom can exact a terrible price. He plumbs the highs and lows of guilt, betrayal, loneliness, romance, love, despair, and vengeance. Ultimately he attains his dream, America, where he arrives at an awkward time of McCarthy and the "red scare," which costs him treasured relationships. He devotes his life to the service of his adopted country until years later when the Cold War ends and he answers the yearning in his heart to see his home again. He returns and finds himself adrift, a foreigner in his own country and stranger in his own home

Author Biography

Joe Vitovec came to this country from Czechoslovakia in 1950 after escaping from the communist regime in 1948 and spending more than two years in various refugee camps in Germany, France, and Italy. He spent the last forty years as an art director and developer of training programs and aircraft simulators for the Air Force. He has studied history and art at the Texas Christian University, urban studies at the University of Texas, and was an instructor in political science at the Tarrant Community College in Fort Worth, Texas. He lives in Anacortes, Washington.