Sams, a Georgia physician and popular novelist ( The Whisper of the River ), continues the adventures of naive but resilient Porter Osborne Jr. in this loosely autobiographical novel set during WW II. A Baptist farmboy, Porter feels out of place amid the Methodist country-club set at Emory University Medical School. He deliberately flunks out so he can enlist in the Army, becoming a surgical technician with a mobile hospital unit that takes part in the invasion of Normandy. Quoting Kipling and Millay, obsessed with sex and dating, he and his Army buddies engage in boyish high jinks, but the grim realities of war inevitably intrude. Porter ultimately learns to heed his grandmother's dictum, "Remember who you are." Long and somewhat self-indulgent, this spirited coming-of-age novel is also ruefully funny, tinged with the wisdom of hindsight and crowded with memorable characters. #hardcover