The Post-War Dream the Post-War Dream the Post-War Dream

Sixty-eight-year-old Hollis and his wife Debra have settled into their golden years in a gated community outside of Tucson, Arizona. Although they are devoted to each other, events that took place decades earlier, when Hollis fought in the Korean War, have left him with a deep-seated trauma -- and with a secret he has never been able to share with his wife. As a reluctant Hollis revisits his past after his wife becomes dangerously ill, we see just how much the years of war changed his life forever. In rapturous prose, Cullin captures in The Post-War Dream the complexity of a marriage and the indelible force of the past on one man's life. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Review :
Praise for "A Slight Trick of the Mind" "Cullin's tale is a wise and touching examination of the human condition." --Leslie S. Klinger, "Los Angeles Times Book Review" "This is a lovely, tenderhearted book, full of reserve, good manners, elegance of feeling. It's what a novel should be. You don't read it to be "improved "but for the plain joy of seeing what the language can do in the hands of an affectionate, very accomplished writer." --Carolyn See, "Washington Post" "Cullin is an unusually sophisticated theorist of human nature." --Dan Chiasson, "New York Times Book Review" "An exquisite, immensely satisfying novel." --Bruce Allen," Washington Times" Praise for A SLIGHT TRICK OF THE MIND "Cullin is an unusually sophisticated theorist of human nature. . . As the conclusion of this beautiful novel makes plain, lives aren't like cases or, for that matter, like narratives. They are never solved or resolved: they just one day come to an end." -Dan Chiasson, "New York Times Book Review" "This is a lovely, tenderhearted book, full of reserve, good manners, elegance of feeling. It's what a novel should be. You don't read it to be improved but for the plain joy of seeing what the language can do in the hands of an affectionate, very accomplished writer." -Carolyn See, "The Washington Post" "A multi-faceted, sympathetic portrait of a great man, the kind of memoir that any of us would be honored to have-and it doesn't matter at all that Sherlock Holmes was never a real person. The psyche and its lessons are all the same, and Cullin has captured them brilliantly." -"Detroit Free Press" "Cullin's compassionate work happily reveals the detective to be a man after all. In short, while the book wears the garb of another Holmes adventure, Cullin's tale is a wise and touching examination of the human condition." -"Los Angeles Times Book Review" "Conan Doyle used to complain, perhaps with some degree of jealousy, that most people believed Holmes was a real person and he was only the stenographer. Cullin, a gifted poet and novelist, takes that confusion and turns it into the highest level of art." -"Chicago Tribune" "[A] wonderfully written and heartbreaking study of the detective at 93 as he wrestles with the gradual fading of his memory and mental powers." -"San Francisco Chronicle" "Cullin ends thisperfectly conceived and executed narrative with a compelling picture of the ultimate rationalist, a stranger and afraid, alone in a fragmenting world he is powerless to remake. It's a haunting variation on the image of Holmes approaching retirement that lends an autumnal glow to the later Conan Doyle stories, and it makes for an exquisite, immensely satisfying novel." -"The Washington Times" "From the Hardcover edition."