From the ageless elements of great drama — love and hate, fear and hope, war and retribution — Harry Mark Petrakis, twice nominated for the National Book Awards fiction prize, has spun a modern classic, a novel to stir the senses and to warm the heart.

In the Land of Morning is woven of many threads, chief among them love. The story centers around two love affairs, one youthful and poetic, the other a seething, sensual, mature love that grows to be all-consuming — invulnerable to all but violence.

It is the story, too, of a strange, driven family, seen in a new and mature light by the son newly returned from Vietnam, weary of killing and of death — but finding he has not left these completely behind him. Confrontation and the haunted past lurk to threaten him at home.

The web into which he is drawn expands to include a wide canvas of unforgettable characters, magnificently drawn, each catapulting toward a dramatic destiny. But along with the tragedy and treachery and cruelty there is also laughter and compassion — and the pervasiveness of love.