[close] Once Two Heroes is the story, heart-quickening and tragic, of two Americans called to fight in the Second World War: Mather, a young black man who has grown up in France, and Lewis, the son of a genteel, old, white Mississippi family. Both go to battle full of the best ideas of the world, and prove themselves to be soldiers to be reckoned with. But back home Mather and Lewis learn, each in his own way, that what happened in war was no preparation for the brutal violence of peace. Haunted by the hopes, dreams, and dangerous illusions of America after the war, Once Two Heroes explores the best and worst of what men do, and the grand forces of the past that prefigure the present. [close]