Neverlight — Donald Pfarrer

Neverlight explores the marriage of Richard and Katherine Vail as Richard fights a war that Katherine comes to abhor. Richard is a volunteer, a naval gunfire officer serving with the Marine infantry in Vietnam. Katherine lives a secluded life with their daughter Terry in the New Hampshire woods.

Directing the big weapons, naval guns and Marine Corps artillery, Richard makes his decisions hour by hour -- at incalculable cost.

Katherine is tormented by her body's loneliness and by her horror at the daily drumming of news from the war. If her husband is the good man she believes he is, how can he kill?

Richard doesn't see it quite that way. He asks, rather, If he is the man he should be, how could he place himself anywhere else but with his men?

Katherine finds that "bathing" in the snow can chill her body but not suppress its longings.

Richard finds that the intervals of "peace" between combat operations are harder to endure than the fighting. Two powerful forces are pulling him apart, love for his wife and daughter back home, and the rhythm of fight and recovery Vietnam.