Private Jacob Epp falls in love with his commanding officer's girl, goes AWOL to be alone with her, and finds himself at odds with the entire United States Army during the Second World War

Something about a Soldier is considered by some critics to be Mark Harris's finest novel. The wacky characters and situations are clothed in a trenchant language that says everything Harris wants to say while retaining the purity and simplicity of a fable.The hero is Private Jacob Epp (changed from Epstein), seventeen, from Perkinsville, New York. In 1944 he enters the army and arrives for basic training in Georgia with his Soldier's Handbook and a virginal social conscience. Exposed to racial discrimination and poverty, he becomes a social activist, even flirts briefly with communism. He meets Jolene, a countergirl in the PX, who urges him to embrace her, a warmer object for his love than any abstraction. How Private Epp is saved from death for love is a nutty, ingenious story that the reader won't be able to resist.

This is a biography of a gentle man, a hero who regarded himself as being wholly unsuitable to play the role of the military fighting man. Haunted by the idea of early death, the author's thoughts became focused on a spiritual journey that led him to a faith that became the cornerstone of his life.