This work isn't really a novel; rather it's a collection of short stories that span many decades and link the lives of three soldiers: Dax, Armando, and Wintric. Goolsby presents their childhoods, their time serving together in the Army in Afghanistan, and their coming home to marry and start families. The snapshot stories sometimes bridge years and sometimes leave blank spaces. I'm glad I read it, glad I met these men and absorbed this frank, vivid prose. Most interesting was to see what snapshots the author chooses to define his characters and his themes.

I avoid fiction in which the point-of-view characters are serving or have served in our military unless the author has served him/herself. Not that one necessarily has to experience a thing in order to write fiction, but I've encountered too many novels with an agenda that disrespects members of the military. I picked up this book because the author is a U.S. Air Force officer. There's a strong and aching honesty in these characters. So much of the story shows the effects of a single moment or minute or day or year: war itself (specifically a war without clear goals); the decision to kill to survive and the second-guessing after it; the devastation of sexual assault; the expectations that loved ones can place on a person's healing process; the difficulty of communicating anything when so much exists inside one's head that can't be communicated.

As for craft, there's some head-hopping, mostly in the first few stories. The dialogue is realistic, though not really individualized for the characters. The point of view maintains a bit of distance, sometimes casting forward with a paragraph or two of omniscient "someday he will ..." or "he doesn't know now, but ..." This keeps us from existing in the moment with the characters, but it seems intentional and works overall.

I hated some of the events in this book, but clearly Goolsby intended me to. It would have earned four stars anyway, if not for the end. The conclusion of Dax's story is not only disturbing but also confusing, too much left unexplained (something I rarely say about fiction; I don't like explanatory prose). The conclusions for Armando and Wintric are moving and sad. And too hopeless for me. I don't doubt I'm supposed to feel about this book exactly the way I feel about it, and Goolsby is an adept writer who can evoke simultaneous sympathy and frustration. But hope is a thing I look for in fiction--whether hinted at for the future or achieved on the page. The places we leave each story don't seem to look toward hope for these men, which will keep me from reading the book again.

Three stars for an artful collection of stories that will make the reader ponder, that shows experience in minute, gritty detail and doesn't let the reader look away. ( )

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. ( )