Nearly two decades after the publication of The Repatriate: Love, Basketball, and the KGB, the award-winning memoir of Detroit-born basketball player and journalist Tom Mooradian, readers can now experience the long-awaited sequel. The Repatriate Returns: Home, Family, and the FBI continues Mooradian’s remarkable story of identity, resilience and reconciliation — a narrative entrusted to his loved ones before his passing on June 5, 2024.

In the late 1940s, Mooradian left behind a promising basketball career in the United States to travel to Soviet Armenia with a group of repatriates, where he lived through political repression, cultural transformation and the enduring hope of returning to his homeland. His memoir, The Repatriate, first published in 2008, won seven book awards: the Hollywood Book Festival, Reader’s Views Literary Awards, San Francisco Book Festival, Royal Dragonfly Book Awards, Kindle Book Awards, the Indie Book Awards and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. It has since become an essential contribution to Armenian diaspora literature, praised for its honesty, humanity and historical insight.

Before his passing, Mooradian had completed portions of the manuscript for the sequel, placing it in the hands of his family. With respect, admiration and love, they carefully edited and finalized his work, ensuring that his voice and vision remain intact.

“Tom wrote with both candor and compassion,” said Jan, his wife of 50 years. “The Repatriate Returns is more than a continuation — it is his farewell gift to readers who journeyed with him through the pages of his first memoir. After the first book’s publication, Tom spoke at more than 80 book talks across the United States. Time and again, readers would ask him, ‘What happened next? What happened when you returned to America? Did you ever see Tatiana again? What happened to Kiva? Where did you meet your wife?’ It was because of the sustained and unwavering encouragement — sometimes cajoling — of friends and family that Tom began this second volume. We have now completed it with the care and devotion we believe he would have wanted.”

The Repatriate Returns: Home, Family, and the FBI is now available through local bookstores and Amazon. Readers can also find more information at www.tommooradian.com.