Donald Mahon, a fighter pilot during the Great War, returns to his Georgia home physically disfigured and mentally fading. Escorted by Joe Gilligan and Margaret Powers, two civilians who assume his care, Mahon finds his once-familiar town altered by his absence. His father, an Episcopal rector, clings to denial regarding his son’s impending death, while his fiancée, Cecily Saunders, recoils from his scars. The narrative tracks the social friction caused by Mahon’s presence as his former friends and family navigate their own vanity, lust, and disillusionment against the backdrop of a decaying southern landscape.
Readers interested in the history of the Lost Generation and the specific social cooling that followed the 1918 armistice will find this useful. It serves those examining the shift from traditional Victorian romanticism to the starker realities of the twentieth century. The reader understands how the silence of a dying soldier can expose the hollow pretenses of a civilian population trying to resume a normal life that no longer exists. They walk away with a specific portrait of post-war exhaustion.
- Published
- 1926
- Language
- EN
