The man in the grey flannel suit

Blurb

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit II is a novel by Sloan Wilson. It is a sequel to his previous novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and was released in 1984.
The novel focuses on the lives of the protagonists from the first novel as they approach middle age. Unlike the The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, II was written in the first person of Tom Rath who narrates the story of his life. The tone of the novel and the behavior of the characters are dissimilar to the first novel, and some of the first novel's main characters - including Judge Bernstein and the family of Tom's boss, Ralph Hopkins - do not appear in the sequel. An addition to the story is Rath's son from his romance during World War II in Italy. He visits his father at the Rath home in Southport, Connecticut only to venture out on his own, eventually enlisting in the United States Army with a tour in Vietnam. He is killed there, closing the story of Rath's infidelity during his service.
Wilson's oft-used narrative, of a middle aged man in a relationship with a younger woman, forms the basis of the book. Rath meets the younger woman while on assignment to Washington, D.C. to attend a conference on mental health.