A richly textured novel about the love-hate conflict between a father and his grown son

The story is told by the son, James, a sculptor of small objets d'art, miniature versions of the armor his father has spent a lifetime collecting. The father's ambiguities become the son's obsession and he finds himself digging deeper and deeper into his father's past in an effort to understand the man before he was a father. He discovers a student filled with romantic dreams and high hopes, a latent homosexual who, after a bizarre episode of dashed expectations rejects his nature and builds a fortress...