Blood Pearls

Our story begins in the mountains above Cu Chi, South Vietnam, in a Buddhist monastery in AD 1285. during a Mongol attack. It ends in the White House over seven centuries later.
In 1969 the U.S. is deeply embroiled in the Vietnam War, and three college seniors await the results of the first American draft lottery. Two of the young men end up going to war - one willingly and one reluctantly - and one avoids the draft altogether. When the war ends, there is a scramble among countries to secure the oil drilling rights to a huge offshore deposit discovered near Vietnam. Bribes are offered and accepted by officials in both Vietnam and the United States.
Personal greed, corruption, and political intrigue infiltrate the White House. The three college friends, each of whose lives were shaped by the war, reconnect to help bring justice to Vietnam vets suffering from the effects of Agent Orange and to the families of American POWs and MIAs still held in Vietnam. And in what is now the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the mountains around Cu Chi, formerly Saigon and now Ho Chi Minh City, hold more than one secret.