The Post-War Dream — Mitch Cullin

Hollis and Debra have settled into their golden years in a gated community outside of Tucson. Although they are devoted to each other, events that took place decades earlier have left Hollis with a deep-seated trauma -- and with a secret he has never been able to share with his wife. When Debra is diagnosed with cancer, she makes her husband a simple request -- "Tell me about us" -- which forces Hollis to revisit his past.

In 1950, Hollis fought in the Korean War alongside the bigoted but charismatic Bill McCreedy. McCreedy seems to have it all, although he is a mercurial soldier whose ungovernable behavior is often at odds with what Hollis believes to be right. Now, years later, Hollis is haunted by memories of McCreedy and his own wartime actions that he had tried to suppress. These recollections eventually lead him from the body-strewn battlefields of Korea to the remote farmhouse in Texas where McCreedy had grown up -- and for the first time he finds himself examining his and Debra's life to understand how chance had played a hand in bringing them together.

Mitch Cullin, one of today's most celebrated young novelists, captures some of the most difficult themes in literature: fate, love, and death. The Post-War Dream is literary fiction of the highest order.