Stephen Becker

When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business; but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken. Benny was granted that much. In September of 1950, when Joseph was four months old and Carol had someone else to love, the government of the United States, which had paid for much of Dr. Benny Beer’s medical education, sent him the bill. He was impressed into service—an emergency, they assured him—and was sent to Korea, where a war had been agreed upon.

To be so close to death that you later remember deciding whether to die or to live — that is the experience eloquently related here by the talented author of A COVENANT WITH DEATHand other novels. A thirty-nine-year-old New Yorker. Mr. Becker attended Harvard and Yen Clung University in Peking, has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, and translated several books from the French, including THE LAST OF THE JUST.He lives in Westchester County with his wife, two sons, and daughter.