MARIO PUZO'S FIRST ACCLAIMED NOVEL, BEFORE HIS CREATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, THE GODFATHER. AN ASTOUNDING STORY OF CORRUPTION AND BETRAYAL. Hardened by the brutality and desceration of three long years of war, Walter Mosca returns to America a changed man. But he has no sooner arrived than he knows he must run back to the land of the enemy, to find the woman who accepts the rage and cruelty of the world around her. In Germany, where the bitter aftermath of war is everything apparent, American cigarettes will buy almost anything. Mosca now faces a different kind of war, one in which he must make a fateful decision - between love and ambition, passion and greed, life and death.