Présentation de l'éditeur :
The main male character in The Fearless Man is Captain MacHugh Clare, skipper of Delta Company, who wisely lets his company gunnery sergeant, Gunny Hitchcock, execute his orders without interference.
Mac is (or is not) the fearless man of the title. His bonds with Hitchcock and with Paul Adrano, the chaplain, with Doc Bartholomew, Corporal Sedgwick, Lieutenant Dan Shaw, with Sergeant Graves (aka Graves Registration) -- with his wife Sarah, who lives at Camp Lejeune -- these bonds twined together are his lifeline.
Mac's idea is not to survive but to lead Delta Company. When he thinks of Sarah she is all that is good and beautiful in his world. But he is still the commander of Delta Company, a twenty-four-hour duty and obsession. When a man dies, Mac feels himself going with him for the first few steps into oblivion. When his troops holler bloody murder in a firefight or cheer when the enemy is foolish enough, in the marines view, to spring an ambush, Mac is elevated and vindicated in his admiration for his men.
The chaplain's idea is to confirm God. He believes He exists but has made Himself difficult to know. If the priest is tempted by a woman or by the solitary consolation he feels God's witnessing presence -- somewhere. He volunteered for the Navy and Vietnam because he is certain that the place to search is where the signs and symbols of hell predominate. "If I don't find Him here I'll not find him anyplace." This is too close to saying He doesn't exist. That is Paul's ordeal. He believes that in a just world God must exist. As a chaplain, a servant of the men, his idea is to learn whether the world is just, a hazardous quest for a man of faith.
Présentation de l'éditeur :
The mission is Vietnam in microcosm: a quest to find and destroy a secret cache of enemy weapons. Leading this fateful journey is Captain MacHugh Clare, a draftee who has become the consummate soldier. Unconcerned with death, each morning he shifts immediately from unconsciousness to action. His reward at the end of the mission is the possibility of seeing his wife.
Beside Mac is his opposite. Chaplain Paul Adrano, who knows only doubt and disillusion. He has come to Vietnam to kill his fear, to find his faith again on the field of battle, and he will soon know the forbidden power of violence and the pull of sexual temptation.
Meanwhile, in America, Mac's Sarah wife fights her own battle - against a feeling of uselessness. Struggling with notions of a woman's proper role, Sarah begins to see possibilities beyond merely waiting for the man she loves.
The Fearless Man is an epic novel of all the wars we wage to occupy ground, forge a future, and save our souls.
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