Both Ends

"Both Ends" traces the last years of a dying man and ex-soldier, who killed a POW in Vietnam and suffered for it. Now, he has taken a case that sucks him back to Southeast Asia and a revolution that pits beginnings and ends, life and death, morality and sin, and the human condition.

Jim Beide served in Vietnam as an intelligence officer despite his dislike of the war. Compelled to shoot a Viet Cong prisoner, he carries his guilt through an international law practice, a difficult marriage, and his love for a Polish woman who shares her own difficulties. Beide takes a land-grabbing case in Keasia on behalf of villagers and in the resolution of the case, entwines himself with the leader of a revolution against the dictator of Keasia.

Mark Moorstein lives and practices law in Virginia near Washington, DC. He is a Princeton and Temple Law graduate, and over his legal career has practiced land use, trial, and international law, and has argued extensively in the state and federal courts. In 1990, he was a delegate to a Moscow conference addressing the attempted rewriting of the constitution of the Soviet Union. He has litigated international matters such as land-grabbing issues in Cambodia. He speaks and reads several languages, plays jazz piano, and has maintained a serious interest in photography. He and his wife have two grown children and four grandchildren and have rescued many dogs.