Review
"... a lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so
if the romance is new, a thousand if we've married
him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs
an entire person. What we each create, since
whatever is missing is filled in by our imagination,
is the person we wish him to be. The less we know
him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why
we always remember that first rapturous night when
he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only
when he is dead."
For Pearlie Cook, as for many women
of the 1950s, her marriage is everything. It's how
she orients herself to the world, the filter through
which everything passes, her purpose and her pride.
When Buzz, an old friend from her husband's past,...
Beyond the Book
Conscientious Objectors during WWII"This is a war story. It was not meant to
be. It started as a love story,
the story of a marriage, but the
war has stuck to everywhere like
shattered glass. Not an ordinary
story of men in battle, but of
those who did not go to war. The
cowards and shirkers; those who
let an error keep them from
their duty, those who saw it and
hid, those who stood up and
refused it, even those too young
to know that one day they would
rise and flee their own
country... The story of those
men, and of a woman in a window,...
