The Hero

"Many war heroes return from battle to a world that has changed dramatically. In the case of James Parsons, the protagonist of W. Somerset Maugham's The Hero, his family and hometown have remained exactly as they were before he left to serve his country abroad -- it is his own outlook and values that have shifted. Will he be able to settle back into his old life and regain the happiness that was once his? Read The Hero to find out."@en
"Five years change a man, and when they have been spent in the bush fighting Boers, the changes are profound. So when Jamie Parson comes home with captain's pips and a Victoria Cross, he is no longer the boy he was. But not to his parents and Mary, his sweetheart...they expect him to fit in. Jamie can't, and shortly breaks off with Mary. Happiness remains a shadow, illusive as the Boers, and Jamie finds the moral struggle as relentless as the military."@en