Welcome to the website of Brad Pokorny. I’m a writer, painter, and former journalist.
I’ve just finished a novel, with the working title “All From the Same Dust.”
I’m looking for a publisher. And maybe an agent first.
The book is a historical novel set at the outset of World War II. It follows the adventures of three American pilots who join the famous Flying Tigers and travel to Burma just before Pearl Harbor. They meet and love an exotic trio of women: a girl-next-door American nurse, a seductively gorgeous Anglo-Indian bar girl, and a beautiful, pacifism-minded Burmese Buddhist. Set mainly in Rangoon during the Japanese invasion of Burma, the story finds each character dramatically transformed by the crucible of war.
It draws extensively on personal diaries and contemporary accounts of the American Volunteer Group, as the Tigers were officially known, and strives to be historically accurate in its setting, timeline, and cultural references. It features tense air action, humorous and heroic banter between the pilots, and deep conversations about life and love. Subsidiary characters include haughty British colonialists, Japanese spies, and black marketeers.
What sets the novel apart from the usual modern fly-shoot-love World War II genre is its exploration of how each character is, quite realistically for the era, driven by his or her moral and religious beliefs. The underlying narrative explores themes of war and peace, colonialism and race, and nationalism versus globalism through dialog and the characters’ passionate engagement with each other.
You can read the first few chapters here.
I also do Abstract Painting. Most of the rest of this site is currently devoted to my paintings. But there will be more news about my novel here as thing develop.
Brad Pokorny