Image of The Last Repatriate by Matthew Salesses


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’ inventive, ambitious, big-hearted brilliance.”

-Laura van den Berg, author of What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

 

“Matthew Salesses is a writer to embrace. In their beauty, strangeness, and heart, his fictions are a gift.”

-Paul Yoon, author of Once the Shore

 

“Salesses’ examination of the troubled mind of a Korean War POW returning home is pensive and brooding. A subtly painful psychological journey.”

-James Franco, author of Palo Alto