Jack Colcroft, former Marine, former professor, former war protester, has left a declining America for a comfortably meaningless life on an island paradise, after breaking up with his musician wife, Sally, a leading protestor against the war, and falling out with his late father, a distinguished public servant who was high in the councils waging that war and was defeated by it. Jack’s best friend, Max McKenzie, plagued by his memories of combat in the Vietnam jungle, commits suicide. Stung...