The Officers' Wives
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- Synopsis
- This is a book [novel] you will never forget. It is about the U.S. Army, the huge unwieldly organism on which much of the nation's survival depends. It is about Americans trying to live personal lives, to cling to touchstones of faith and hope in the grip of the blind, blunderous history of the last 25 years. It is about marriage, the illusions and hopes that people bring to it, the struggle to maintain and renew commitment. On June 5, 1950, graduation day at West Point, Joanna Welsh of Cincinnati, poet and idealist, walks beneath an arch of shining sabers, the bride of Peter MacArthur Burke, one of the stars of Army's perenially victorious football team. Within minutes she is followed by Amy Kemble, the cool, tough-minded Philadelphia heiress, who has married George Rosser, a somewhat bland but clever Californian. Next comes red-haired Honor Prescott of Charlesville, Virginia, giddily in love with Adam Thayer of Maine, who hides his brilliance-and his reckless idealism-behind a stream of jokes and comic impersonations. Even as the new second lieutenants and their wives drank champagne, tanks and artillery were being posi-( ^ tioned on an obscure Asian peninsula named Korea. War explodes before their honeymoons are over-and history becomes a dark presence in their lives. For Joanna it is the beginning of a spiritual journey that strips away her simplistic Catholic faith and teaches her harsh lessons about life's brutality, love's limitations. For Amy, war- whether in Korea or Vietnam-merely complicates her efforts to make George a general-until she discovers that courage is at the heart of the kind of love she needs and wants. Honor must grapple with a marriage that often teeters on oblivion, as Adam's experience in the Army-above all his opposition to the war in Vietnam-turns him into a savage cynic. Ranging from occupied Germany and Japan of the 1950s to the steamy chaos of Saigon and Bangkok in the 1960s, the officers' wives is a global drama told by a writer whose gifts as a novelist and historian here achieve a triumphant fusion. A sense of history, an awareness of the impact of the past on every level of life from the experience of the individual to the travails of a city to the crises of the nation, makes Thomas Fleming's fiction and nonfiction consistently interesting and important.
- Copyright:
- 1981
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 578 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780385148054
- Publisher:
- N/A
- Date of Addition:
- 07/27/04
- Copyrighted By:
- Thomas J. Fleming
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Military, Literature and Fiction, Parenting and Family
- Submitted By:
- earl schwab
- Proofread By:
- Lena
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.