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Dr. Fidelis Okechukwu Mkparu was born in Onitsha, Nigeria in 1959, the son of Dennis and Virginia Mkparu. He attended Catholic primary school in Onitsha and the famous boarding school, Government Secondary School, Afikpo, where he graduated with distinction. He was the editor of his high school magazine in his senior year. He immigrated to the United States in 1977 to attend college. He majored in biochemistry and biophysics in undergraduate school. After undergraduate school, he won several scholarships to attend Medical School. He was a recipient of a Reader’s Digest Scholarship. Mkparu is in private practice of cardiology and finds fulfillment in patient care. Some may consider him a workaholic, but he derives joy from the interaction with his patients. It is hard to imagine that he wanted to be a biomedical engineer, before he surrendered to his true love of helping others. Although he is devoted to his practice of medicine, he feels that his wife and children are his priority.
Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite
"My Last Summer with You: No Fanfare for a Withered Rose" begins in 2010. Joseph decides to stay in for lunch as the weather is cold and wintery. His secretary tells him that he has a telephone call and to his surprise, the call is from Francesca who went to college with Joseph thirty-one years ago. Joseph isn't happy to hear from Franceca after so many years have passed with no communication in between. However, she tells him that their mutual friend Wendy had resigned from a real estate board on which she has served with Francesca and her husband. Wendy wants Joseph to take her place and is giving him five per cent of her interest in that corporation. Joseph then thinks back to that time when he was a newly arrived student at a prestigious North Carolina college. He was only seventeen years old, dark of skin and from a tropical country. First Wendy and then Francesca befriend Joseph, encouraging him into a more intimate relationship. But Joseph is from a country far away and, despite his brilliant mind, isn't certain of how to talk and act around Americans.
"My Last Summer with You: No Fanfare for a Withered Rose" by Fidelis O. Mkparu tells of a gifted young student who arrives in the United States in the late 1970's and has to make his way in a culture totally unknown to him. Mkparu writes well and the reader will feel Joseph's embarrassment and anguish as he acclimatizes and endures racially biased comments from Francesca and Wendy's sorority sisters as first Wendy and then Francesca come on to him. "My Last Summer with You" is an eye-opener and readers will love to read of Joseph's trials and tribulations as he adjusts to a foreign land and to young women who are "trying out their wings."
