Legacy of Guilt

In 1977 Carol Zanetti traveled with her then-husband, an itinerant minister, and cruelly abusive father and spouse, and their three young children on an ultimately disastrous year-long mission to South Korea to raise funds for and build a technical training institute for the destitute children of American and European servicemen overseas, a journey that opened her eyes not only to the horrors faced by Amerasian children and young adults abroad, whose suffering and scars eerily mirrored her own, but to the personal demons that had led her to take such a blind leap of faith in the first place, and then followed her home. Legacy of Guilt is the dramatic, unflinching story of an abused and traumatized little girl who grows up to find understanding, redemption and eventual peace in an unlikely and unexpected place: the sad faces and tortured lives of AmerAsians in South Korea. From a brownstone tenement in 1950s New York City through a series of trailer parks and slums toward a new life "Out West"; from a childhood of emotional, psychological and sexual abuse resulting in near paralyzing self-abasement and fear, and an equally abusive and faith shattering marriage; from the back streets and dark alleyways of Seoul and Taegu, where the deserted and despised children of foreign servicemen battle their own legacies of shame and of guilt, emerges a journey of self-discovery, emotional and spiritual healing, wisdom, and an acceptance and appreciation of life, and of overcoming fear and ending the legacies of guilt forever.