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Once again celebrating the Greatest Generation, Pratt (The Lighthouse Keeper, p. 12, etc.) charts another love story, this time about twin brothers who worship the same woman.

Now in his 80s and ailing, Lucian Parker is determined to face the ghosts he’s been running from since he came back from WWII. He’s been happily married to Mary Jane all these years, raised a family, and run a successful railroad, but he has a dark secret that he knows he must confess to her. He recalls how it all began in the summer of 1939 when the Parker family inherited enough money to buy a short-line rail near Redemption, Oklahoma. Twin brothers Lucian and Norman had mixed feelings about the move: Norman was happy to live in the country, but Lucian wanted to go college, become an engineer, and live in the city. Both agreed on one thing, though: they both were in love with Mary Jane Harrison, who was spending the summer there with her grandfather. When Mary Jane left to work in California, Lucian, who’d also moved there, began courting her, much to Norman’s dismay. As war seemed imminent, Lucian and Norman both joined up, and Lucian married Mary Jane two days before shipping out. At that point in his recollections, Lucian pauses and with Mary Jane heads to Manila. There, in some overwrought scenes, while visiting a war cemetery with a taxi driver, who too coincidentally turns out to be the son of a former comrade, Lucian recalls the war years. The twins were in the same unit in the Philippines, and while Norman joined the Philippine guerrillas on Bataan after the American retreat, Lucian was a POW forced by the Japanese to work on a railroad. Only one brother made it home. Obvious foreshadowing undercuts the revelations that follow, and the affirmations of love and forgiveness seem more saccharine than sincere.

Heartfelt but without the emotional punch of Pratt’s previous work.