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The Ice Beneath You: A Novel
The Ice Beneath You: A Novel
The Ice Beneath You: A Novel
Ebook319 pages4 hours

The Ice Beneath You: A Novel

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Just as The Things They Carried and Catch-22 spoke to their generations with truth and dark humor, this brilliant first novel defines the experience of war for its era.
Benjamin Jones, twenty-three, discharged after an army tour in Somalia, heads cross-country on a Greyhound, seeking refuge on the West Coast. He has left behind his best friend, Trevor, and Liz Ross, a female soldier with whom Jones has fallen in love. But Jones has also left behind a tragedy -- a horrible, split-second action made in Somalia -- that Trevor, Jones, and the army have implicitly agreed to forget.
Alone on the streets of San Francisco, and then north on the Washington coast, Jones finds that an uneducated ex-soldier is qualified only as a peep show fantasy object or as a hired hand to a bottom-feeding smuggler and pornographer. Recurring visions of his life as a soldier gradually reveal the full truth -- and agony -- of his experience, and a reunion with Liz and a violent confrontation with Trevor bring the young soldier's journey to a wrenching conclusion -- but one not without hope.
At equal turns tense, brutal, and poetic, The Ice Beneath You is a soldier's story for a time when there weren't supposed to be any more soldiers' stories.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherTouchstone
Release dateOct 2, 2002
ISBN9781439104552
The Ice Beneath You: A Novel
Author

Christian Bauman

Christian Bauman has worked as a touring musician, cook, painter, clerk, laborer, and editor. He served four years as a soldier in the US Army Waterborne, including tours of duty in Somalia and Haiti. He lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Bauman's first book, and it blew me away. I reviewed it on Bookslut, if it's possible to still find it there, I'm not sure. It may be among the lost issues. A great portrayal of life as a soldier (both in the military and back in civilian life) in this modern era.

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The Ice Beneath You - Christian Bauman

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