Ronin

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." Mark Twain. "And when I die and when I'm gone, There'll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on." Laura Nyro. A meditation on rogue samurai (ronin) legends of medieval Japan and an ancient Chinese legend, RONIN was inspired by Homer's The Odyssey and Kurosawa's timeless classic, Seven Samurai. In the wake of personal tragedy and career-ending wounds, Jake Deveraux, a US Navy SEAL veteran, embarks on a journey to Northern Thailand that changes his life forever in Mike Tucker's fifth work of fiction-RONIN. In the fall of 1992, Mike Tucker lived and hunted with the Karen, Black Lahu and Hmong hill tribes, deep in Northern Thailand, for this novel, RONIN. A novelist, poet and the author of thirteen books, he holds degrees in history and literature, and honors in poetry. Under fire with Spanish counterterrorists at the Siege of the Banco Central in Barcelona in 1981, he later freed Karen villagers from a Burmese Army slave labor patrol in 1992. He has read his poetry from Tokyo to New York City and his work has been taught at The Field School in Washington, D.C. Mike Tucker was an American Marine infantryman in a special operations capable unit in the late 1980s and served in California, Hawaii, South Korea and Japan. His next book, The Girl in the Black Dress and other stories, will be published in March 2016. Song of the Wind, a love story set in the ancient Near East, will be published in November 2016 and The Raid, a novella inspired by the Siege of the Banco Central, will be published in March 2017. Mike Tucker supports the SAVE THE TIGER fund, RESTORE NYC and SANDY HOOK PROMISE. An American expatriate, he lives in Northern Thailand. www.miketuckernovelist.com