Nor Tolerate Among Us

When a fatal flaw threatens to overshadow our best intentions, is it because we defy the influence of our environment? Or because we succumb to it. Although this story could be told anywhere, it could happen nowhere else and perhaps in no other decade, when intolerance of race, sex, lifestyle, and the military defined the times, when Americans' faith in government was shaken by Vietnam and Watergate, women would begin taking appointments to the military academies, the country was recovering from the tensions of the 1960's, the atheist movement was challenging any combination of God and government, and the Midwest was blighted by the incident at Wounded Knee. Emerging from his sheltered small town life, Gene Townsend is altered by an institution where - at that time - young men from all walks of life and every state in the union were thrust together in that microcosm called The Academy. In his quest to learn the true meaning of honor, courage, faith, and love, Gene forges friendships - some of them redemptive, others dangerously caustic - that influence his path to manhood, affecting the balance he hopes to acquire, the esteem he aspires to achieve, and the love he longs to share. FORWARD by Stephen Kentucky (Ky) Webb. USAFA Class of 1976
As a contemporary graduate of USAFA with the author, I have a distinct appreciation of the story Charles Williams has woven in his latest novel. I enjoyed the accurate remembrances of cadet life, both uplifting and depressing, from regulation and ritual, through the demands on time, mind, and body, to the valuable, identity-forming human interaction and relationships with other cadets.
While cadets are normal (mostly!) college-age youth with the same immaturity and social needs as their civilian college peers, they live in a pressure cooker of hardened rules and expectations. This life is on full display in Williams' novel.
But this is not a documentary on AFA cadet life. The Academy serves as a stage on which Williams has placed his characters, and the story is much more about their actions and reactions to the environment and, more importantly, to their friends and nemeses.
The title of the novel reminds us of the corollary tenet of the AFA Honor Code which holds that cadets must hold their fellow cadets to the same high standard of honor required of themselves. In my day, teamwork, esprit de corps and looking out for your brother cadet was stressed in training. A soldier will say that the prime motivation for bravery, heroism, and reliable performance in combat is that unquenchable desire to protect and support your brother soldiers. Not tolerating, hence snitching or ratting out a fellow cadet thus poses a moral dilemma for a young man. Williams weaves this conflict into his story.
I admire Williams' skill in overlaying a poignant human story on a deeper moral framework that will speak to every reader, regardless of your connection to service academies or the military. What readers say about Nor Tolerate Among us:
What a gift an author has to make the characters come alive as we feel those characters' joy and sorrow, excitement and introspection. Keep up the Good Work, Charles! I anxiously await your next book! Lynda DeWitt Kalantzakis Great book! Actually teared up at the end. I loved reading it entirely! Thank you! Hamp Heard, USAFA Class of 1977 Five squadrons, 5 Groups in 5 years (including Basic). Charles Williams knows the "Blue Zoo" better than most. He offers insights and experiences all generations will enjoy. John Hope, USAFA Class of 1976