Dark Yesterdays - Bright Tomorrows

As a Texas-based soldier in the United States Army, who is relatively young and Black as well—Cpl. Tyrone Lattimore is generally regarded as soft-spoken, intelligent, and highly proficient. In some circles, however, the corporal is perceived as a societal enigma—a man who marches to the beat of a different but benevolent drummer, and that alternately makes him a very controversial figure. Actually, that analogy would be applicable to any particular period and to any depicted setting. But upon revisiting America in the 1960s, when the Vietnam War got underway, when political assassinations shocked our nation and when racial strife was rampant—Lattimore emerges as a bona fide anomaly and, seemingly, one without peer. He is dearly loved, respected, and practically revered by the majority of his superiors and his fellow soldiers—but not all of them. And that, ironically, is a grievous mystery to the corporal himself. Regardless of a man’s race, religion, or social status in life, he’s endowed with an insatiable love for mankind, and it sustains his very being. Lattimore can’t refrain from wondering, however, if his craving will ever be sated.

-- Lionel Harris