Coming out of high school, Alan Paige could only dream of college. The family is in a hole living on his father's unemployment, his mother's job at a school library, his sister's part-time at a fast-food, and his $6.50 an hour as a gofer in a golf course. As a test of his academic credential from the top three of his class, he applies for admission at GWU and is accepted. Tony Feller, a part-time co-worker at the links and a kind-hearted friend, is deeply troubled to see him and his family struggling to claw their way out of their hole, especially when Alan tells him about his college...

He is a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in the Philippines eleven months before the Japanese invaded the country December 8, 1941 hours after Pearl Harbor. He survived the war and lived there till the age of twenty-four. In July 1965, two weeks after college, he ventured on a journey to America with a tourist visa and two hundred dollars in his pocket. He is now a retired U.S. Federal employee in the D.C. Capital area and has finally found time to finish this memoir, an autobiographical novel, recounting the first 21-year period of that journey: 1965-1986. * Ordinary Lives: A Journey Through...