Patches of Fire is Albert French's deeply personal memoir of a young black man's Vietnam War experience.  He is witness to death and hardship beyond his reasoning, and returns home only to find an America rife with racial tension after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.  In an atmosphere of hatred for the war and its participants, French labors to overcome the haunting images of war that plague him, and to make his way in white America.  He finds work as a newspaper photographer, then as a magazine publisher, and finally as a critically acclaimed novelist.  French relates with vivid detail the trials of war, the struggles of a Vietnam veteran, and the ultimate redemption of a life filled with accomplishment.