For humans, the challenge is to unite soul and role, to discover the hidden wholeness that enables us to be in the world who we are in our souls, and to act in accordance with our deepest and truest natures.

Brian Turner writes as only a soldier can, of terror and compassion, hurt and horror, sympathy and desire. He takes us into the truth and trauma of the Iraq war in language that is precise, delicate and beautiful, even as it tells of a suicide bomber, a skull shattered by a bullet, a blade in a bloodgroove.