The Man Who Walked Out of Isabelle

In 1954 on the remote jungle battlefield of Dien Bien Phu, the communist Vietminh defeated French Colonialism. The pursuing peace was only a pause between conflicts on the Indochinese Peninsula, sustainable peace a myth. Beneath the surface of perpetual wars, Corsican syndicates, Vietnamese gangsters, and the CIA postured for control of the Laotian opium trade. American puppets under an anti-communist banner, exploited the populous. Communist extracted a heavy penance from Western collaborators. Winning hearts and minds competed with death's harvest. Crawling out of the French garrison Isabelle, Max Kohl a German in the French Foreign Legion plunges into this lethal world. As a boy soldier of the Third Reich, his Nazi mentors taught him the military skills to survive. Haunted by past anti-Semitic sins, he drifts on the tides of continuous Indochina conflicts.

Jim Bourg is a retired real estate executive. As an American high school student in Singapore, he fostered a passion for Southeast Asia. Over the last several decades, he visited all seven continents with extensive trips to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Isabelle is his debut novel. Currently he resides in Phoenix with his wife and two greyhounds.