Show Me A Hero

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy” is the quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald that supplies the poignantly appropriate title to this novel.

The hero is a three-star general in field command of the U.S. Army in Korea. He is a magnificent hero—brave, profoundly patriotic, professionally skillful, intensely human. His tragedy is double-barreled: his position requires him to fight a containing war when he believes that he should fight a war to win; and his personal life is closing in defeat because his wife and son cannot share his devotion to the Army.

But the book is far more than the personal tragedy of General Lark Logan. It gives a panoramic and detailed picture of a modern army action. It traces the peculiar and often humorous experiences of enlisted men; it presents the details of a grimly conscientious court martial; it follows the working press and the working espionage systems of both sides; it affords a touching picture of a brave and deeply religious superannuated chaplain. Each of the individual stories is interrelated in a fine and highly skilled mosaic of narrative that keeps the reader turning pages to see what happens next—and that always satisfies him with the solution of each dramatic situation as it develops.

In the end, one is exalted by the fine picture of devoted Americans in action—Americans who, with all their blatancy and occasional commercial cynicism, live the sort of lives and perform the sort of actions which have made America great and must continue to do so.