Brief description:
From the dust jacket:
A touch of “Bull” Halsey, atrace of Patton, a bit of Ike and MacArthur, but indisputably a unique, complex individual, four-star General Simon (Bolivar) Copperwood at sixty-eight stands on the brink of honorable retirement or the supreme glory—the bestowal of a fifth star, making him one of the tiny elite of history, a General of the Armies, the five-star general he has longed to be.
Through flashbacks, We see Simon as a boy in Montana during the pre-World War I period. Family circumstances lead to his obtaining a West Point appointment, and after two years he is off to France, in the AEF under General Pershing in the legendary Rainbow Division. He distinguishes himself in service, as not only a "good soldier" but one now tempered with actual combat experience.
After the war he marries tho first of his three Wives, flapper Ada Roch, a marriage which ends in divorce and his promotion to major in command of a unit in Peking.
But the path to Army success is not always straight, and Simon experiences a fall from grace during his tour in Asia when he charms and marries a Senator's wife and is “exiled” to command of a supply dump and fails to make colonel. Sarah dies in - an accident. Simon is stricken with grief and turns to alcohol. But the soldier in him prevails and by perseverance he builds up his reputation as he warns of the power of Hitler and performs brilliantly to become a one-star general.
Back in Virginia after the war, Simon marries the third of his wives, a delicate young poetess named Margerie. Called into action in Korea, he is awarded his second star, and dniing duty in Vietnam he receives his third and fourth. The third marriage ends in Margerie's suicide. Lonely after the death of his last wife and many friends, Simon waits for the climax of his career. He has lived and loved with an intensity matched only by his desire for the fifth star. The story has now come full circle. The choice of the fifth star is the President's, and for one terrible clay of national homage, Copperwood’s fate hangs in the balance.
A touch of “Bull” Halsey, atrace of Patton, a bit of Ike and MacArthur, but indisputably a unique, complex individual, four-star General Simon (Bolivar) Copperwood at sixty-eight stands on the brink of honorable retirement or the supreme glory—the bestowal of a fifth star, making him one of the tiny elite of history, a General of the Armies, the five-star general he has longed to be.
Through flashbacks, We see Simon as a boy in Montana during the pre-World War I period. Family circumstances lead to his obtaining a West Point appointment, and after two years he is off to France, in the AEF under General Pershing in the legendary Rainbow Division. He distinguishes himself in service, as not only a "good soldier" but one now tempered with actual combat experience.
After the war he marries tho first of his three Wives, flapper Ada Roch, a marriage which ends in divorce and his promotion to major in command of a unit in Peking.
But the path to Army success is not always straight, and Simon experiences a fall from grace during his tour in Asia when he charms and marries a Senator's wife and is “exiled” to command of a supply dump and fails to make colonel. Sarah dies in - an accident. Simon is stricken with grief and turns to alcohol. But the soldier in him prevails and by perseverance he builds up his reputation as he warns of the power of Hitler and performs brilliantly to become a one-star general.
Back in Virginia after the war, Simon marries the third of his wives, a delicate young poetess named Margerie. Called into action in Korea, he is awarded his second star, and dniing duty in Vietnam he receives his third and fourth. The third marriage ends in Margerie's suicide. Lonely after the death of his last wife and many friends, Simon waits for the climax of his career. He has lived and loved with an intensity matched only by his desire for the fifth star. The story has now come full circle. The choice of the fifth star is the President's, and for one terrible clay of national homage, Copperwood’s fate hangs in the balance.
Publication
Putnam (1974), 374 pages