Peter Santore, the narrator, is an American lawyer in his mid-thirties
come to England to track down a certain Hilary Pennels, the daughter of
a Korean War hero who died in a POW camp, the same camp in which Peter's
own father turned traitor and whose informing became, perhaps, the cause
of Hilary's father's death. Only Hilary's guardian, Fox himself a
survivor of the camp can explain, if he will, the troubling past that
haunts the now fully grown war babies. As Frederick Busch's relentless
narrative bears down upon this complexity of betrayals, the lines
between exploiter and exploited become eerily blurred.