Beginning his studies at the Carolina Military Institute, Will McLean is an outsider to the authoritarianism of the military, as well as to the turmoil over Southern desegregation. He survives the notorious freshman hazing, and manages to avoid the school's infamous secret society, the Ten. But in this powerful 1980 novel by the author of The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, Will is tasked with mentoring the Institute's first black student, and is drawn into the intense racial politics—and the subculture of violence—simmering beneath the surface of college life.