Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly consumes him. But Mercy’s family disapproves, and the two young lovers flee to New Orleans to play out their passionate affair, until Mercy’s father hunts them down, takes his daughter home, and sends Henry running for his life. The time is 1950, and the Korean War hangs in the balance. Descended from a long line of soldiers, Henry enlists in the Marines and arrives in Korea on the eve of the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir, with temperatures fifty degrees below zero and an enemy force far beyond the scope of his imagining. But the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far. Award-winning author Robert Olmstead takes us into one of the most physically challenging battles in history and, with just as much intensity, into an electrifying, all-consuming love affair.