A TOURNAMENT OF A DISTINGUISHED WHITE ORDER follows the complicated love duel between a creative Army private and a sensuous young actress, a pair energized and troubled by a romance set during the Korean War. Jim Mahoney learns how to soldier while Fawn Evans battles for a career on the New York stage during Broadway's Golden Age. They become adults in the turbulent Fifties that are roiled with conflicts concerning the McCarthy hearings, the Cold War and the loyalty oath at a time when New York is becoming the world's capital. Jim's refusal to sign the loyalty oath brings him in confrontation with military justice. The couple's story details the problem of maintaining a love affair while deadly war looms. Meanwhile the aching needs of their bodies clash with societal and religious taboos before the time of the Sexual Revolution. They are caught up in a ritual that imposes military and career disciplines on their minds clogged with Catholic rules that hinder the sex-charged lovers. Strong male friendships carry Jim along. Luckily Jim finds two outstanding friends among the draftee ranks of the citizen army--one a pessimistic hedonist and the other a gracious, humorous humanist. The ambiguities and heartbreaks of Mid-Century America are revealed.