Read the beginning of chapter 1, "The New Zealand Sheep Farmer and the Recruit" from Black Elephants: A Memoir by Karol Nielsen:

"The minivan bumped along hills that hugged Lake Titicaca. Haze made the water look silver. I sat behind Dirk, a German traveler with a ponytail. It hung to the middle of his back, streaked bronze from the South American sun. He wore dusty jeans and a tank top that skimmed his torso. Dirk was one of those hard-core travelers, the kind I’d met along the way, who took regular trips through Latin America, Africa, and the Far East. They seemed so worldly, and despite the army tanks, tear gas, and guns I’d seen during my year as a writer for an English-language newspaper in Argentina, I still felt sheltered. I was only beginning to understand the underbelly of the world, something the serious travelers seemed to have understood from birth.

Growing up in Connecticut, I felt the pull of faraway places my father and grandfather had been, places like India, China, and Vietnam. My father fought in the central highlands of Vietnam, as a commissioned officer with the 101st Airborne Division—the Screaming Eagles. After the war, he left the army and became a businessman in New York City. He had a window office in the Chrysler Building. He dressed in suits, ties, and wing-tipped shoes. Secretly, I pictured him trekking through jungle, a Nebraska boy, lean and tall and tan—a Viking in army fatigues. My father never glamorized war, but my mother’s father did. He made it sound like an exotic mission, flying over the Himalayas—the camel’s hump—from India to China during World War II. He was never Grandfather or Grandpa or anything that sounded old. He was Bobby, the hero who flew the hump. He’d take us to Chinese restaurants and try to impress us by speaking Chinese to the waiters. It worked. I wanted big adventure like Bobby, action like a new recruit."

Karol Nielsen has contributed to Smith Magazine’s The Moment anthology and other publications, including the New York Times, New York Newsday, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Guernica, Lumina, and Epiphany—before she became nonfiction editor of the magazine. Excerpts from this memoir were selected as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. Her poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. She teaches memoir writing at New York University.

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Black Elephants, visit  http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Black-Elephants,674868.aspx.