South Harbors Secrets - Ali Langroodi

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Résumé :
South Harbors Secrets, A Journey From The Caspian Sea To Panbeh City In Mississippi In 1950s, tiny Neek was living in a small, serene, but poor village by the Caspian Sea. He was blessed to have the love and blessing of his four angels: mom, grandma, and two aunties. He loved stories more than anything else. The unique and intact landscape of the North fueled his imagination and nurtured his eager for discoveries and adventures. His imagination took off when he read, for the very first time, the novels about the life and adventures of Oliver Twist, Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn. He could recite their stories by heart. He was unaware that the ups and downs of his life could qualify as true adventures in their own right. He moved from his small village to the capital city of Tehran. He beat the odds and graduated from the medical school. He then moved to the United States and became a cancer specialist. He finally settled down in Panbeh City in the state of Mississippi. He pioneered a quiz show that offered tens of college scholarships to the talented but disadvantaged African-American students in this part of the South. Quite accidentally, he was entangled with the family of Darius, the first champion of the game show. The scholarship was instrumental for Darius to become a prominent lawyer in Washington, D.C. and Virginia. It turned out that Darius's family harbored deep and painful secrets from the past. The way those secrets unraveled were quite traumatic, taunting, agonizing, and deadly. Meanwhile, two mothers, worlds apart, had an uncanny resemblance in their struggles and sacrifices to make a better future for their son. The parallel life of Soraya and South is a testimony that human spirit transcends all the artificial barriers like race, nationality, and religion. ...

Biographie:
I was born by the Caspian Sea, in the northern part of Iran. Up until age of 28, however, I lived in the capital city of Tehran. Despite this fact, I remained a true northerner. I waited anxiously for every summer only to see my sweet nana, who was like an angel to me. My chores, during my stay there, could be summarized as playing, swimming, sunbathing, fishing, boating, hanging out with my cousins, watching birds and animals, and not much anything else. I also have fun memories from visiting our other relatives. How can I forget their rice farms, gardens, wooden boats, and barns? I consider myself lucky to have witnessed and experienced their beautiful culture, which seemingly imitated their amazing surrounding landscape. The memories of that era always bring me a rush of joy and happiness. No wonder, those experiences have become a source of inspiration for my books. Life, however, tailored and fashioned a different suit in the book of fate for me. Far from the greenery of the North, I moved to the U.S.A. After obtaining two graduate degrees in the field of biological sciences, I found my self fascinated with studying human nature. Thus, I obtained my medical degree in psychiatry and worked in that capacity up until my retirement. I began writing novels ever since....

Sommaire:
Tiny Neek loved stories and enjoyed running around and playing with animals on his grandma's pasture. Outdoors were everything to him, pure and simple. His father, however, had a different plan for him. Neek halfheartedly attended the classes but held on to the adventurous stories. His transition from a small village to Tehran and finally to Michigan was an adventure in and of itself, but life had more in store for him. Michigan inadvertently changed his name to Nick but afforded him a beautiful wife. After losing his wife, he left Michigan for Mississippi, where he organized a quiz game for the high school kids in a farming town. Darius, the first winner of the game, made a prestigious career based on that victory. The friendship between Nick and Darius blossomed particularly because Nick found an uncanny resemblance between his family and that of Darius's family. However, the dark secrets of Darius's family from decades earlier upended all that....