WWII has just ended, and in the first postwar summer, a group of veterans come home bringing the war with them like a disease they have contracted and are intent on curing. A group of them arrive at a renowned Writers'' Workshop in NYC in search of peace, purpose and meaning. In that workshop, under the tutelage of the strange and estranged Miss Whiteside, disappointed writer, and a veteran of her own wars, they try to come to terms with what they have done in the war, and what the war has done to them. These are veterans who are trying to put their experiences and insights down on paper for publication for others to read and understand. It is this "Beast in View" they all pursue, and it is in portraying that pursuit that Rothberg gives us a series of unforgettable events and characters who come to learn that peace is war by other means.
