It's 1966, Christmas Day, the Missouri Ozarks. Johnny Bell, not quite 16, is found in a snowdrift along a farm-to-market road by a fundamentalist farm family named Ogletree. Johnny came from Brownsville, Texas to the Ozarks, walking much of the way, with his grandfather, George Bell. George, a dying man, had determined to return to the home place he abandoned during the severe drought of the early 1950s because of a fabulous heritage he hopes to pass on to Johnny. Shortly after their arrival, George dies. Johnny is taken in by the Ogletree family, over the objections of Charley Larkin, a...

These twelve stories reflect the combat infantry experience of the Vietnam War--in the gritty "Tanks," "Called of God," and "Incubation Period." There's also the woman's perspective of Arlene, a naive Red Cross volunteer or "Doughnut Dolly," in "A Man's World." Mort captures veterans' experiences in "Rest Stop," a woeful, divorced man's tale; "Hallelujah By and By," a dark, almost supernatural story set in the Arkansas Ozarks; and "Behind Enemy Lines," the story of a homeless, damaged man who at last finds his way home. All but two of these stories were previously published in such magazines...