Tom Yarborough

A native of Louisiana, I’m currently a military historian/author. A decorated Air Force combat pilot, I also served tours as the air attaché at the American Embassy in Bangkok, and as liaison officer to the State Department in Washington, DC. After leaving the Air Force I was a professor and department chair at Indiana University and history professor at Northern Virginia Community College. I now live in West Springfield, Virginia, where I maintain ties to the academic community by lecturing and writing articles for various scholarly journals. My writing background includes the books Da Nang Diary (St. Martin’s Press and Casemate Publishing), winner of the Military Writers Society of America Gold Medal for best memoir of 2014, and A Shau Valor (Casemate Publishing), a finalist for the 2016 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award. I have also written numerous featured articles published in WWII History, Journal of American History, Vietnam, Aviation History, and The Supreme Court Historical Society Quarterly.

My first Novel, The Many Lies of Zoey, was published by Adelaide Books on March 30, 2020. In this poignant and intimate new novel, Sam Mirabeau, A dedicated Foreign Service officer, is obsessed with the enigma girl, the pet name he has given his sister Zoey. He has adored this beautiful creature since their childhood together in New Orleans. As the years pass, whatever guise Zoey assumes—whether as Madame Murville Laniel, the wife of a French Foreign Ministry official, or the mistress of a sinister Hong Kong businessman—Sam fixates on Zoey, a femme fatale who always lives impulse to action as she pursues a career as a nurse, clandestinely works as a call girl, moonlights as a DJ, and grows/sells pot.

This family saga also takes readers on a behind-the-scenes journey through actual international events of the 1970s-1990s. As Sam’s Sate Department career progresses, the siblings’ paths continue to cross and intertwine. Sam doesn’t know if Zoey is wicked or admirable—her unpredictable antics and flamboyant behavior bring out the bizarre in them both.

Sam’s reputation as an adroit trouble shooter lands him an assignment as head of the U.S. Refugee Office in Bangkok. During a hijacking at Bangkok’s airport, Sam discovers his sister working as a “mule” for a shady Hong Kong smuggler. Drawn to Hong Kong by his self-reinforcing delusional obsession with protecting his sister, Sam confronts Mr. Zhang, Zoey’s Svengali, and murders him in cold blood.

Sam hides out on the other side of the world in yet another special duty assignment as deputy to the commissioner general of the New Orleans World’s Fair. He has his hands full while attempting to ride herd on Zoey who has returned to New Orleans to marry and divorce yet another rich husband. While working as a registered nurse, she lands a part-time gig as a DJ—apparently the New Orleans music scene gives her access to what she terms “Lots of famous musician friends on drugs and with lots of money.” As Sam deals with the abduction of the young son of a Chinese diplomat, Zoey continues to run the streets of the French Quarter as a sexy, carefree party girl, living for the moment.

The final cataclysm for Sam and Zoey occurs when Hurricane Katrina devastates New Orleans where Zoey works as an ICU nurse. In the aftermath of Katrina she is charged with negligent homicide, accused of euthanizing three patients. Throughout the sensational trial, Sam stands by his sister’s side, especially after the media circus bubs Zoey “The Angel of Death.”

Will Sam ever learn who his sister really is? She becomes for Sam what Moby Dick was to Captain Ahab: the object of an obsessive, destructive quest. Framed against oddball juxtapositions and quirky events, Sam and Zoey may well form one of modern literature’s most striking co-dependencies, with nearly all the positive and negative consequences such relationships entail.

I now have an author web page. Please visit at https://tomyarborough.com