(From the dust jacket flap) "John Norman, with memories of the noisy beaches and bloody roads of Italy, came back from war wounded and fed up with a lot of things he didn't feel inclined to talk about. His is the story of a man in transition, not filled with bitterness so much as impressed with a sense of the futility of many values of our civilization.

He was in no hurry to pick up his life where he left it. Various ways of living invited him. There was Carol, with whom he could--and did--live gaily and in abandonment for a short spell; Bowen, who cared more about tearing the world apart than about putting it together again; Elisha Hare, who viewed life with detachment; Deirdre Dodd, the forthright bookseller, who hired him as a clerk--and there was Mary Carter.

Frank Fenton's novel of how John Norman found what he needed touches profound truth, now with wit, now with disturbing vision. His first book since A Place in the Sun, which appeared in 1942--it is written with tenderness, humor, and sensitive understanding."