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.

Hollis and Debra, a couple in their golden years who live in a gated community outside of Tucson, are forced to confront the trauma of the past when Debra, diagnosed with cancer, asks her husband to relive his memories of the Korean War. Reprint.

is the author of eight books, including A Slight Trick of the Mind, Tideland, and Branches, a novel-in-verse. He divides his time between California’s San Gabriel Valley and Tokyo, Japan, and in addition to writing fiction he collaborates on various projects with the artist Peter I. Chang.