As they mustered out of the service after World War II, Paxton Davis and his sixteen million fellow soldiers embark on one of the great benders in American history. Davis and his comrades quickly set about trying to make up for what they'd missed during the war. But they soon found that America was changing on a fundamental level.

Like millions of other servicemen, Davis took advantage of the G. I. Bill, using it to attend Johns Hopkins University. After graduation, he returned to his hometown to work for the local newspaper with its talented, quirky staff. From his beginnings as a novice who put his carbon paper in the typewriter backwards and kept his paychecks so long that the business office had to ask him to cash them, Davis matured into a reliable reporter who knew how to handle a good story when he heard one.

Yet it was only at the death of his beloved father that Davis was thrust into a status that neither World War II nor college nor full-time work had been able to confer upon him—that of manhood.