A Sense of Honor

At the U.S. Naval Academy in February 1968, a demanding first classman takes responsibility for an ill-prepared plebe struggling to survive Annapolis’s exacting system of discipline, hierarchy and tradition. Their conflict unfolds while the Tet Offensive intensifies the Vietnam War overseas and anti-war protest grows at civilian universities, making the Academy’s arguments about duty and authority feel increasingly urgent.

The novel tests the ideals behind military training rather than accepting them at face value. Hazing, loyalty, personal ambition and institutional change force the midshipmen to decide whether honour means obedience, endurance, moral judgment or some uneasy combination of all three. A Sense of Honor is both a coming-of-age story and a study of the Naval Academy at a moment when the demands of an ongoing war were colliding with a changing American society.