This is another good read - true story... I recalled one ot the incidents in this book...
"Conrad- I finished reading your manuscript, it was riveting! I think it should be made into a movie. You provided me with an enlightening look into a country I knew very little about, and into a fellow West Pointer who, after reading his work, I feel I could call a friend and a compatriot." - Kevin Mckeown, West Point Class of 1977
- Archived in The Smithsonian Institute's Anacostia Library
- Won 2nd place at Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Literary Award(2011)
Little about Taylor's primitive upbringing, in a remote mining town in the Amazon jungle, prepared him for a first-of-a-kind scholarship to West Point. An extraordinary opportunity for most, his was a life-changer. PATH to FREEDOM charts a sometimes-humorous journey of perseverance, resilience, hope, survival, and love. It traverses between Guyana and the United States Military Academy - at the height of the Vietnam War.
The narrative sums up rude awakenings, especially after West Point - because of West Point. Taylor offers up a ringside seat to a dictatorship obsessed about him being in cahoots with the United States. His was the impossible task of proving that he was not - or else!
More than a memoir, this historically-accurate book provides a unique prism through which to see the cultural trauma of emigration, the unique experience that is West Point, the personal side of Cold-War-era geopolitics, and the mayhem of Third World politics. Its subtly-threaded love story sets it apart.
IGH, I read this book recently. Conrad Taylor gave a first-hand account of the victimization and harassment he and another West Point grad Chaitram Singh were subjected to in the GDF. Taylor was not a member of any political party. Just because he and Singh were Queen's College cadets who got scholarships to study at West Point, they were suspected of being CIA spies. After spending only a few days in Guyana, Conrad fled to the USA.