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    I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them: A Novel
    I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them: A Novel
    I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them: A Novel
    Ebook316 pages4 hours

    I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them: A Novel

    By Jesse Goolsby

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A “powerful” novel of young soldiers in Afghanistan and on the home front (Esquire).
     
    A Florida Book Awards Gold Medalist
     
    Longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize
     
    Winner of the Military Writers Association of America Bronze Medal
     
    Wintric Ellis joins the army as soon as he graduates from high school, saying goodbye to his girlfriend, Kristen, and to the backwoods California town whose borders have always been the limits of his horizon. Deployed for two years in Afghanistan in a directionless war, he struggles to find his bearings in a place where allies could at any second turn out to be foes.
     
    Two career soldiers, Dax and Torres, take Wintric under their wing. Together, these three men will face an impossible choice: risk death or commit a harrowing act of war.
     
    The aftershocks echo long after each returns home to a transfigured world, where a veteran’s own children may fear to touch him and his nightmares still hold sway. Moving backward and forward in time to track these unforgettable characters from childhood to parenthood, from redwood forests to open desert roads to the streets of Kabul, I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them is a work of disarming eloquence and heart-wrenching wisdom from “one of the very rare authors who writes with authoritative insight into the warfare of the twenty-first century” (Robert Olen Butler).
     
    “Bracing, riveting.” —Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone
     
    “Add Jesse Goolsby to the list of promising military-experienced writers including Phil Klay.” —Military Times
     
    “One of the best works of literature to come from these wars.” —storySouth

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJun 2, 2015
    ISBN9780544381025
    I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them: A Novel

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    Reviews for I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

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    • 5/5
      I'D WALK WITH MY FRIENDS IF I COULD FIND THEM, by Jesse Goolsby.Goolsby's debut novel may well stand as one of the best novels yet to come out of the war in Afghanistan, which seems a bit strange, since the war itself occupies a very small part of the narrative. Because character is king in this beautifully written work of fiction. Instead of a lengthy full-frontal look at the random violence of our continuing war (occupation?) in Afghanistan, we are given an intimate glimpse into the lives of three young men who were 'victimized' and deeply affected by it. I knew from the book's very first line that Wintric Ellis, with his "size 8 boot" would not come away unharmed, and, despite the best efforts of his two new friends, Torres and Dax, to look after him, he does not. Raised fatherless in a small Northern California sawmill town, the army was a way out for Wintric, but the trauma he suffers in Afghanistan sends him quickly back home to a twisted and tortured post-war existence. Torres, a Colorado boy raised Mormon on the very doorsteps of Fort Carson and the Air Force Academy, is also marked forever by the war, to the extent that is terrified to touch his daughters. And Big Dax, an awkward, oversized product of New Jersey, survives the war only to land in a wheel chair, the victim of a hit and run driver.This story of three comrades and their lives pre- and post-war, brought to mind a book I read more than fifty years ago, Erich Maria Remarque's THREE COMRADES. The settings and the time are vastly different, of course, but the pain-filled confusion of lives lived in the aftermath of war are very similar.Some readers may complain that Goolsby's novel is not really about the war. But they will be wrong. War, once experienced, never really goes away for the young men and women who have been a part of it. It becomes a part of who they are, who they become; and its consequences and effects are long-lasting and far-reaching. Which explains the lengthy and detailed segments about the spouses and children of these three forever-damaged men. Not since reading Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya's THE WATCH, or Kevin Powers' THE YELLOW BIRDS, have I been so caught up in a novel about the current wars. Jesse Goolsby is a damn fine writer. Very highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I’d Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them by Jesse Goolsby is literary work of astonishing depth and beauty, and yet one that is deeply heart-wrenchingly sad and at the same time hopeful. The story surrounds the lives of three American soldiers, Wintric, Dax, and Torres, each of whom struggles in their own ways, and while each man’s story is told, the book focuses most on the struggles that occur after the men’s deployments in Afghanistan. What I really enjoyed and some readers may not enjoy as much as I, is how Goolsby tells the three men’s stories in a non linear manner, I felt this brought the story to life and made the characters all the more realistic. I’d Walk With My Friends If I Could Find Them reads a lot like a memoir and yet it is a work of gut-wrenching literary fiction. Goolsby’s has crafted a beautifully written and eloquent debut and one I would recommend to those who enjoy well-written fiction as well as those who are in book discussion groups.

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    I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them - Jesse Goolsby

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