spine slant. spot on front cover and minor edge wear.  writing on 1st end page. edges discoloring. dustjacket  aged, price clipped,  leaves folded.,  rub marks, chips, and scratches. edges creased, tattered and torn.

This remarkable novel of a young man's discovery of himself and his country differs in all major ways from earlier novels charting that difficult passage. The difference is in the person if its protagonist. Unlike the tentative hero such fiction has made familiar. Big John Sirovich is heir to a people who celebrate young men, he is confident of his own manhood, he is endowed with genes which match intellectual energy with physical strength; he is powered  by the clear vision of what a life can be - gleaned from the mother who perceived it but not live to grasp it. Seventeen years of successful striving - for academic prizes and scholarships - have carried him out of the world he was born into, beyond those Serbian immigrants like his father who dug coal in the bowels of as new continent. A resort on an island off San Diego is as good a place to start as any..john has never taken the time to fall in love or become anyone's friend,  until his affair with the wife of the hotel butcher and his fatal attempt to befriend a lost soul name Spike.  One year after he leaves home, in June 1942, he stands splendid in his naval officer's uniform saying goodbye to his father.