In a stunning new novel by the author of the widely acclaimed China Boy, provocative issues, from the American military to racial stereotypes to identity - both national and cultural - come together to create a literary tour de force about the Chinese-American experience.

Kai Ting is a cadet at West Point in the 1960s. He comes to the military academy from his turbulent San Francisco boyhood with the hope of honoring his father, a former officer in Chiang Kai-shek's army who never came to terms with his new life in America, where he was stripped of his native culture; of escaping his stepmother, a stern, uncaring American woman; and, above all, of becoming firmly and undeniably American.

And he leaves behind Uncle Shim, his confidant and friend, the person who had served as a Chinese conscience throughout Kai's youth.

But as one of the very few Asians at the Point and with the shadow of Vietnam hanging over the cadet corps, Kai, en route from plebe to upperclassman, must walk a precarious tightrope over a lava pit of prejudice and preconceptions. Kai is intelligent and eager but he is not surefooted. And when he plummets into the heart of a cheating scandal, his very survival depends on his ability to learn - and learn fast - a new code of behavior, a new tribal etiquette.

Gus Lee has written a powerful novel about the force of tradition about a young man's struggle to bring together his double heritage and to find his way between two often contradictory concepts of honor and duty.