The novel is filtered through the consciousness of Ray who, by the time he tells this story, has landed in the hospital. Ray's imagination sweeps across time and place. After describing his role in the Confederate army, Ray says, "I live in so many centuries. Everybody is still alive." His imagination is both the probable reason for Ray's madness (if it is madness) and great solace to him. Death is a reality that Ray, as a doctor, a lover, a veteran, and a man, cannot simply accept. The deaths of thou closest to him — his Navy buddies killed in Vietnam and Sister Hooch — are losses Ray tries to overcome by viewing the past as simultaneous with the present.

There is much about Ray that is admirable, but his heroism is hardly unequivocal. Ray is an unlikely combination of weakness and strength, prejudice and tolerance, infidelity and...