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New York: Vantage Press. Very Good in Good dj. (c.1959). First Edition. Hardcover. NOISBN . (price-clipped) [solid copy, moderate shelfwear, light soiling to page edges, gift inscription (non-authorial) on ffep; jacket worn at edges and extremities, moderate rubbing/soiling]. Presumably-autobiographical war novel, much of which takes place in an Italian beach town. The author, an Oklahoma native described in the jacket blurb as "an artist who served as a rifle platoon leader with the 85th Division in Italy during World War II," writes of a young soldier from "an impoverished family in a southwestern town [who] is uprooted from his drab surroundings and catapulted into a new, strange world of war abroad -- as a rifleman at the front. [Surprise!] Emotional, longing to express himself through some creative form [an artist a-borning!], he comes into contact with Edward Jordon, a fellow soldier who has been a wealthy dilettante [like there's any other kind]. The boy, awed by the older man, seeks to learn all that he can from him. Disillusionment sets in...." But why should I spoil it for you? (And anyway, don't get the idea I'm making fun of this book. In fact, I love vanity-press novels -- and believe that the vanity-press war novel, in particular, is a literary sub-genre just ripe for study and analysis. I don't know if there's ever been a definitive bibliography of these things, but during the 1950s and 1960s they were published by the dozens, if not hundreds, and many -- like this one -- clearly represent a kind of "working out" of their authors' post-war psychological issues.) .