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William Bolduck, infantry officer,
regains consciousness in a medical setting, to find out he
has lost both testicles in a skirmish with the enemy. He is
a driven man and after military service rises to prominence
in his chosen business profession. Loyalty is one of his chief
attributes, and, once successful, he gathers some of his former
infantry platoon into his fold, taking some of them off a
near-scrap heap or rescuing them from oblivion.
But Bolduck has a continuing and
harrowing dream of seeing a boy playing baseball, with the
constant but implied terror that the boy is the child he could
never have. One of this old noncoms, Louis Montori from Brooklyn,
now part of his staff, learns that Bolduck's wife and a grown
son she keeps hidden in the background, trying not to hurt
Bolduck. Montori then recalls Bolduck's dating two girls before
service in Korea, and tracks them down. One had a child out
of wedlock, and he strives to link the child, now married
with children, to Bolduck, to ease the pain of the constant
dream or nightmare. The book brings together the dream and
the reality.
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