Community News

Don Kesterson’s new book discusses family’s escape from Vietnam

PARKERSBURG -- Wood County native Don Kesterson has recently published a book, "Ring of Freedom," about a Vietnamese family's escape from Communist Vietnam.

In the fall of 2018, Kesterson said, he became friends with J.C. Lightner, also formerly of Wood County now residing in Huntersville, N.C. Lightner told him a story about a colleague of his wife and that the family had escaped Vietnam after the fall of South Vietnam to the Communists.

A few weeks later, Kesterson was introduced to Dr. Dao Vuong at a coffee shop in Huntersville by Lightner. Dao's father Dr. Toan Tu Vuong had written a journal on his life and about the family's escape from Vietnam, said Kesterson, who lives in Chapin, S.C.

After hearing Dao relay her family's story in that one hour meeting, Kesterson said he was hooked on taking on the project of bringing this story to the American people. Over the last eight months, Kesterson took excerpts from Toan's journal encapsulating the story of unsuccessful escape attempts, to their final and successful escape, according to a news release.

Kesterson said the family's escape was not without adventure -- "stuck at sea in a small, overcrowded broken down boat, encountering and robbed by pirates, and being stuck in refugee camps."

Through a promotional campaign by Lightner, on Nov. 20 the memoir, "Ring of Freedom," was released in paperback. Within a few days, it was an Amazon number one best seller, Kesterson said.

The front and back cover of the book were designed by Rock Graphics Inc., owned by Jay Johnson, also from Parkersburg, now residing in Concord, N.C.

Kesterson said his writing career began as a research project that turned into an approximately 1,000-page unpublished history book.

His editor, Sandy Tritt of Parkersburg, after reviewing one of the chapters from his history book suggested a story regarding Ferdinand Marcos and his recovery of the gold buried in the Philippines would make a great novel, Kesterson said. After giving it much thought, Kesterson said he decided to take her advice.

But first, Kesterson said he had to learn how to prepare to write such a novel. He took a course on creating characters and scenes and outlines. The project began in 2010 that resulted in Kesterson's first novel, "The President's Gold," in 2013 about the Marcos regime.

"The President's Gold" and all future novels followed the same process, Kesterson said -- create the historically accurate timeline, then build the story with his fictional characters inserted into the story to personalize those events.

Kesterson's next project, "Gold of the Spirits," published in 2014, was the prequel to "The President's Gold." It was written to give a clearer background on the burial of the gold in the Philippines and some of the early recovery projects, he said.

Before writing the sequel to "The President's Gold," Kesterson said, he wrote a series on the cause and effects of the Vietnam Conflict, with two published novels, "Pawns: Magic Bullet" (2017) and "Pawns: Kings in Check" (2018).

Kesterson said the reason he decided to write these novels was two-fold: one day he saw a bumper sticker "When I left Vietnam, we were winning." Growing up in the middle of daily news of the Vietnam Conflict, Kesterson had never heard that or seen it in writing, he said.

The other was a close family friend was one of the first casualties of Vietnam. Kesterson could not find out much about his death, even going through military channels, he said.

Kesterson is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and has been a consulting geologist in the oil and gas industry for almost 40 years. Writing has become a passion for him, he said.

Kesterson said he is working on another book in the Vietnam Series and a final sequel in the Gold Series.

He has a website, donkesterson.com, and is a blogger. His goal is to get out the truth about the real history of the world, Kesterson said.

Throughout his writing career, Kesterson said, he was glad he heeded the words of wisdom of the man who hired him to prepare that research project, mentioned above, which got him started writing books, "Don't quit your day job."

He is married to Jayne (Miracle) Kesterson, of Parkersburg; they have a grown daughter, Amber, who resides in the Carolinas.