Tender Victory: A Novel

Rev. Johnny Fletcher serves as a military chaplain during World War II, providing spiritual support to wounded soldiers. His life changes when he intervenes to protect five young Holocaust survivors from an angry mob. Learning they have no homes or families, Fletcher brings them to America. He settles the children in Barryfield, Pennsylvania, his coal-mining hometown, intending to raise them according to their individual faiths—two Protestant, two Catholic, and one Jewish. The community responds with prejudice and distrust, revealing buried religious divisions beneath the town's surface. A local newspaper publisher exploits the situation for his own purposes, intensifying the hostility. Fletcher works with Lorry Summerfield, daughter of one of Barryfield's most influential citizens, to help the townspeople move past their intolerance before the situation becomes irreversible.