Cynthia Voigt was born in 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts. A high-school teacher of English, Voigt began her writing career in 1981 and produced a string of ten bestselling, acclaimed young-adult novels within the next five years. Voigt insists upon the sophistication of younger reading audiences, refusing to sugarcoat difficult issues like loss, family conflict, death, and pain. The Runner, one of several books about the Tillerman family, takes on the issue of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a rebellious boy who makes the complicated choice to enlist in the army.
The Vietnam War. United States military forces were officially involved in Vietnam from 1964 to 1972. The history of America's involvement with this country, however, reaches back to the close of World War II. Before the war, France counted Vietnam among its colonies. The situation changed, though, in 1945 at the war's end. Vietnam was proclaimed a republic, and France signed an accord with its president, Ho Chi Minh, while the Japanese occupied the greater Indochina area. After the war, America wanted France to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance for mutual defense against the Soviet Union and other communist nations.
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