A Christmas to Remember: (Or Perhaps Forget)

A novel set in Charleston, SC in the late winter of 1972-73. Air Force sergeant Dick Mathes arrived at Charleston two years before after a combat tour in Southeast Asia. Single, he's looking for the girl of his dreams. He thinks he has found her in Airman Carleigh Delacorte, a young woman still in her teens who has just been assigned to his squadron. They are flung together at a squadron Christmas gathering on Friday before the holiday and both think they are a match made in heaven. But while Dick is out on a trip in the huge C-5 Galaxy on which he's a crewmember, Carleigh gets cold feet due to her young age of eighteen. She realizes Dick is looking for permanency but comes to believe she is too young for marriage and a family. When he returns, she tells Dick how she feels and he enters a state of limbo in which he becomes dazed and confused.