The mission is Vietnam in microcosm: a quest to find and destroy a secret cache of enemy weapons. Leading this fateful journey is Captain MacHugh Clare, a draftee who has become the consummate soldier.
Unconcerned with death, each morning he shifts immediately from unconsciousness to action. His reward at the end of the mission is the possibility of seeing his wife.
Beside Mac is his opposite. Chaplain Paul Adrano, who knows only doubt and disillusion. He has come to Vietnam to kill his fear, to find his faith again on the field of battle, and he will soon know the forbidden power of violence and the pull of sexual temptation. Meanwhile, in America, Mac's Sarah wife fights her own battle - against a feeling of uselessness.
Struggling with notions of a woman's proper role, Sarah begins to see possibilities beyond merely waiting for the man she loves. The Fearless Man is an epic novel of all the wars we wage to occupy ground, forge a future, and save our souls.
Millions of Americans will be on the road heading back from the beach on the Labor Day holiday, which marks the end of summer in the US. For those in the state of Maryland, that journey may involve driving across the long and notoriously nerve-racking Chesapeake Bay Bridge, ranked as one of the scariest in the world to cross.
The trip is too much for some motorists, who pay someone else to drive them and their cars across the water. The BBC spent the day with Brittney Manzoni, a driver with Kent Island Express, to find out what gives the bridge its fearsome reputation.