The Corsican: A Novel

Buonaparte Sartene, the adopted son of a Corsican Mafia family, is released from prison and offered a choice: join the French Resistance or serve seven years. A skilled thief with talent for violence and subterfuge, Sartene negotiates not just a pardon but the right to settle his family in a French colony after the war. He chooses Laos in the late 1940s, a land offering opportunity and a fresh start. Working with the OSS, Sartene, his son Jean, and lieutenants Auguste and Benito take control of the Laotian opium trade and push out Communist forces. When a betrayal within his organization threatens his family, Sartene withdraws from the business. A decade later, his grandson Pierre, a US intelligence agent in Saigon during the early Vietnam War, must track down his father's murderer and his grandfather's betrayer to seek revenge. The novel spans from occupied France to Southeast Asia, following Sartene's rise to power and the consequences that echo through generations.