Book excerpt: …When I left the small hotel in the Montparnase section of Paris to enter the taxi I’d booked with the desk clerk the night before to take me to the Charles DeGaulle airport north of the city, I paused on the sidewalk and considered: Do I have all of my luggage? Yes. And my ticket and passport? Yes. Am I doing the right thing? Will this man be the right one . . . or perhaps I’m making another wrong turn on my road through life? But my last question went unanswered in my mind as I watched the driver put my bags in the trunk, then I began my journey to America. And to Jim…