From the killing fields of World War II to a Chinese POW camp during the Korean War, this mesmerizing novel is a tribute to the legacy of the Greatest Generation
Separated from his fellow American soldiers, Benny Beer walks alone on a frozen plain in Germany during World War II. Lost and afraid, he seeks shelter in an abandoned tavern and encounters a victim of the Holocaust. Benny tries to save the suffering man's life, but never knows if he succeedshe wakes up in a hospital bed, wounded and missing his dog tags, with no memory of how he got there.
Sent back to Brooklyn with a limp and a Purple Heart, Benny falls in love, gets married, and becomes a doctornot necessarily in that orderbut his life is just beginning when he is called to serve his country once more. In Korea, he is captured and sent to a Chinese prison camp, where for two and a half long years he practices the fine art of self-preservation and fights the cruelty and...