Quest: An Adoptee’s Search

by Peter Caldwell

22-year old Amerasian Sam returns to his birthplace in Hue, Việt-Nam to try and find out about his biological parents.

“Sam stopped at the start of the bridge to take some photos and enjoy the expansive view of the lake and the tomb. Suddenly the tranquility was broken by a kind of muffled explosion in the distance coming from perhaps the forest of pines and frangipani trees surrounding the walled enclosures.”

A tale of an unforgettable and intriguing journey from Southern California to a storied Việt-Nam location. What will the twists of fate have in store for him as he attempts to fill in the blanks about himself and his family?

119 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 3, 2025

About the author

Peter Caldwell was born on April 16, 1940 in Schenectady, New York. His family moved to Pasadena, California where he attended school and later Pomona College followed by the UCLA School of Medicine. He went on to become a pediatrician/pediatric cardiologist and served three years in the US Naval Reserve, the first year as a battalion surgeon with the Marines in Vietnam in 1966-1967. He completed his military service in Hawaii where he returned to settle in Honolulu in 1973 along with his wife Olga. His family includes an adopted Tahitian son and two sponsored Indonesian girls. He spent 30 years working for the Hawaii Permanente Medical Group and then retired from full-time medical practice spending his professional time volunteering at the Hawaii Medical Mission and assisting with interviews for applicants to the University of Hawaii School of Medicine. In 1991, he wrote his first book , Bac-si: A Doctor Remembers Vietnam, and started his own publishing company, Taote Publishing. A longtime hiker, paddler, backpacker and outdoor photographer, he published his second book, Adventurer's Hawaii, the following year, which focused on his photographic adventures in the Hawaiian Islands. With a family cabin at Echo Lake near Lake Tahoe, his third book, Echo Lake Reflections, told a photographic historical story of the family's four generations in this unique Sierra setting. Joining forces with his brother Don, this book was followed by two photographic guidebooks to the nearby Desolation Wilderness Area. In 2006, being a paddler and a participant, he completed a beautiful coffee table book, Molokai-Oahu through the Years about Hawaii's Molokai-Oahu outrigger canoe race. The much expanded second edition of Adventurerʻs Hawaii in hard cover format was released in December, 2013. He spends his time not only on Oahu but also the Big Island where his family built a second home close to Volcanoes National Park.