Memorial Bridge — James Carroll

This historical saga of a patriotic man and his son “tackles those dangerous, wrenching issues of morality, political ethics, and family ties” (Alice Hoffman).
 
From the New York Times�"bestselling and National Book Award�"winning author of The Cloister, this decades-spanning novel tells the story of Sean Dillon, who escapes from the rough world of the Chicago stockyards to become an agent in J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and then rises to the very top of military intelligence on the eve of its greatest challenge -- and the nation's greatest failure.
 
An Irishman, a Catholic, and a lawyer obsessed with justice, Dillon is a man whose fierce integrity has always set him apart. His indomitable wife, Cass, can see what his defiant adherence to principle is costing him, especially when he is charged with an impossible duty as an air force general. As America becomes more deeply entangled in Vietnam, Dillon will discover that his son has inherited his merciless conscience -- and that he is deeply opposed to the war.
 
From the gangster-ridden politics of Depression-era Chicago to the intrigue and glamour of wartime Washington; from the triumph of virtue in World War II to the moral chaos of Vietnam; from turf battles in the Pentagon to tear-gas conflict in the streets; from a man's inbred solitude to the story of an extraordinary love -- Memorial Bridge is both a journey through twentieth-century history and a tale of one family trying to span the divisions of the American heart.
 
“[Carroll] writes with sweep about faith, redemption, truth, honor. . . . There is beauty and power in his characters and themes, and there is mystery in the big questions that inform Carroll's moral fiction.” -- The Boston Globe