When Reason Sleeps (Viking Mystery & Suspense) - Hardcover

"Tom Sehler" is the name of Rex (Sehler) Burns' father, killed in action 7 April 1943 aboard the USS Aaron Ward (DD 483) off Guadalcanal.

". . . she had still felt shock and loss and a sense of emptiness when that frightened and struggling figure suddenly disappeared into blackness beyond the cliff. It had been a game. He told them it would be a game and no one even thought about David getting hurt. When he shoved him, Dori's eyes saw but her mind couldn't believe. Later, when belief came and brought with it the stifled moans and shuddering, the uncontrollable tears from all of them, Dwayne was there to tell them what to say: An accident. We're all in this together. A bond of death. An accident. Say it was an accident or we all go to prison for murder.
  "And a bond of shame which she didn't face until the next morning when she woke in the bed that had once been so safe. The warm sunlight, patterned on her bedroom wall through the softly curtained windows, suddenly congealed into a stifling iciness as she remembered: oh, my God in heaven, what did I do?
  'Then she ran."