Points of Honor

Author Thomas Boyd is best known for the novel "Through the Wheat," long considered the greatest American novel of World War I. Boyd was a Marine in WWI, saw much fighting action, and was deeply influenced by his battlefield experience. Later, he wrote for newspapers, and while working in a bookstore and writing the literary page of the St. Paul, Minnesota daily newspaper, was befriended by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who then recommended him to the great editor, Maxwell Perkins. As a result, Boyd published several books with Scribners edited by Perkins, including this short story collection, written in place of a sequel to his first war novel, in 1925. As he does in other books, Boyd thoroughly rejects the romance of war, creating situations that are sometimes grotesque, sometimes absurd, always human at their core. This collection has been called "haunting" and like its better known predecessor "Through the Wheat," should be included in the canon of American war stories.