Cletus Frade is a lieutenant in the U.S.

Marine Corps during the Second World War, but he is no ordinary shavetail; his father is a colonel in the Argentine Army and a leader in one of the country's major military-political factions. Frade's mother, a former Baltimore debutante, died long before; Frade's grandfather, in Baltimore, is dead. The novel opens with, in rapid succession, the assassination of Frade's father by Nazi agents, afraid of the father's influence with anti-Nazi factions; the declaration by Dorotea Mallin, Frade's beloved, that she is pregnant; and their subsequent marriage.

Dorotea is lovely and very young but has a will of steel. A daughter of a friend of Cletus's father (and of Cletus's grandfather), she falls in love with Cletus at first sight. Her character is not particularly well developed, but is finely drawn; she reacts with strength, but much like all of...