"A brilliant, ambitious, and subtle novel about Vietnam."--David Bradley, "Philadelphia Inquirer" Ward Just captures the best and the brightest amid the turmoil of the sixties and its repercussions twenty years later through the lives of a good congressman, his good wife, and the good wife's love, an infantry colonel whose memories of the war, and a secret plot concocted by the Washington power brokers to win it, are more than he can bear. "Not many people can write splendid fiction about the inner workings of the American political state. In fact, Ward Just is the only one I can think of."--"Boston Globe" "Just bids to be considered the political novelist of his generation. He may even be considered for a rarer title, that of national novelist."--"New York Times Book Review" "Just pours art, passion, and intelligence into his book....His language radiates. Just's style may be among the most elegant available to a contemporary American writer."--"Cleveland Plain Dealer"