More of a novel than his first, Three Day Pass, this also without prettification, without illusion, and with a colloquial, contemporary quality, concerns one boy's conversion from indifference to participation. A returnee from a year of missions in England, Blanchard, a gunner, is sent to a camp in the midwest. Rarely concerned by the activities of others, Blanchard loses his native indifference once when he strikes a superior officer for Jew-baiting, later gets involved in discrimination against a Negro in a restaurant. The aftermath of political pressure, prejudice, this brings, gives Blanchard a direction he didn't have, and he now goes on-helped by Francesca, his girl... Not too dissimilar from other books of this kind to assure a market.