· Butterfly Wish is a sweeping tale of love, loss and guilt in the aftermath of the Korean War. With painstaking detail and brutal honesty, D. Davidson and R. Marcano bring to life a story few know, but one that won’t soon be forgotten. Haunting and heartbreaking, this story about the bar girls of South Korea and the Airmen who loved and left them brings to life a little-known time with amazing detail. Long since lost to the passage of time, many of the stories of these women who sold their bodies to American service men in order to survive are brought to life here as the authors focus on one GI and one woman who fall in love. Theirs is a stirring and tragic tale about how love can bloom in the most unlikely of places.
- Cara Lockwood,
USA Today best-selling author of “I Do (But I don’t)”
Reviewed By Ray Simmons for Readers’ Favorite
I loved Butterfly Wish: A Doomed Interracial Love Affair Set in Post War South Korea by D. Davidson and R. Marcano. I loved it because I have been an American soldier stationed in Korea. I have had military buddies and been in love with a Korean girl. I have friends who married girls like the girls in the novel and I almost married one myself. The 13-month tour in South Korea can be a powerful experience and Butterfly Wish captured the fun, sadness, tragedy, and adventure that this experience can bring. I have often wished that non-military personnel could learn about this experience. Davidson and Marcano have created a book that goes a long way towards doing this. I wasn't in South Korea at the same time that this story takes place, but I was struck by how the events and the situation eerily mirrored when I was there twenty years later in another branch of service and another military post. The situation is so depressing and the human drama very heartbreakingly real. Butterfly Wish captures this angst beautifully.
The plot is real. I know. I lived it. The characters and friendships are real. I still have ex-military friends like that. The writing is good and the attention to details is right on point. Butterfly Wish is beautifully written and you will fall in love with these characters. If you have any connection whatsoever to the Republic of Korea, then you should definitely read Butterfly Wish. You will understand some of what our soldiers went through and still go through during this hardship tour. This is a rich and gripping story. It can be tense and dramatic too, but most of all, it is real.
This is a powerful narrative that pulls no punches. The authors graphic description of a clash between two cultures is a remarkable piece of story-telling. There are numerous characters throughout the story and none are easy to forget.
- William H. Desser (U.S. Army veteran.)
