Hey, thanks for checking out my book 'Youngblood!' It's a novel set during the Iraq War, but at its heart it's a human story. There's a murder mystery in it, a love story between an American soldier and an Iraqi sheik's daughter, and questions about the legacy and inheritance of armed violence. I hope the book resonates with you.
@eriktorenberg@jeffumbro - Sure thing. I'm an Iraq war veteran who spent fifteen months over there in 2007 and 2008, as part of "The Surge." I'd written some nonfiction about my experiences, but thought I was done with the subject.
Flash forward a few years later - Dec. 2011, when the American military withdrew from Iraq. I found myself staying up late and watching the news, not just thinking about my tour, but about the whole war, its impact upon everyday Iraqis. Also about the inheritance and legacy of armed conflict and how that resonates for long after the combat "ends." Something about those images of the American Stryker vehicles cresting the berms from Iraq into Kuwait compelled this story, or at least the genesis of it.
tl; dr version: I thought I was done with the subject, but the subject wasn't done with me.
An exceptional contemporary war novel - equal parts riveting, mysterious, and thought-provoking. Punctuated with the author's wry sense of humor and full of narrative threads that will have you white-knuckled until the last moment.
Youngblood
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Youngblood
Youngblood