Where Deb is transcendent, the other characters are earthy and real. The novel's other survivor is Lon, a vet who spends his old age swilling Corona with Hollis in their Arizona retirement community. Lon calls his surgery for prostate cancer "a tonsillectomy for the aged" and "a real pain in the ass, literally." Like Hollis he objects to the monotony of their setting, the golfing attire, the "elegant yet cozy" cottages with identical floor plans.

In his portraits of Hollis, Deb, Creed and Lon, Cullin followers will recognize the same sharp psychologist who meditated on deterioration in his previous novel, "A Slight Trick of the Mind." But where the victim there was Sherlock Holmes, "Post-War Dream" focuses on a painfully normal couple. There are no cases to hold Deb and Hollis' story together, not even much of a plot. They buy chicken tenders, Kleenex and St. John's wort zealously and in bulk. But their pain at their bodies failing them before their minds are ready is no less weighty than that of the most famous detective of all time.