Although this is a story about the war in Afghanistan, it is not easily categorized either as a war story, or an action thriller. Instead it is one of those books that slowly seeps into your consciousness and sits there, releasing its insights and power long after you have read it.

It is 1991. Dessert Storm is over and peace has been declared. Thomas Benton a British journalist has arrived to embed with the US military at Check Point Zulu, 100 miles from the Kuwaiti border. Benton gets to talking with one of the men on duty, a young man from the Midwest named Arwood Hobbes, who is naive and bored. Benton who has been wanting to actually visit on of the towns and villages to assess whether the peace is real or not, decides to leave the military encampment and after letting Hobbes know what he intends to do, begins walking to the nearby village.  But no sooner has Benton entered the village, a raid by the insurgents with helicopters and ground troops begins in the village and Benton is under fire and pinned down. Realizing what has happened Hobbes leaves his post and tries to find Hobbes in the midst of the shoot out.  Just as Hobbes finds Benton and they begin making their escape back to the US position, Hobbes sees a young girl in a green dress hiding behind some rubble in the street.  Realizing she is in the line of fire, Hobbes tries to rescue her but before he is able to make a move, a rocket lands right in front of her and when the smoke clears there is nothing left but a massive hole in the ground.

Twenty one years later, Benton gets a phone call from Hobbes. “I have found the girl in the green dress,” he says, “and this time we can save her.”

Derek Miller is an impressive story teller. Like Norwegian by Night, his previous book, he is able to take unlikely characters and breathe life and reality into them so that the reader can see them more fully and with empathy. Hobbes is a man on a quest that is quixotic to say the least, but instead of dismissing him, Miller helps us engage and to become sympathetic to what he is trying to achieve. Benton provides the perfect foil to the impulsive Hobbes. Steady, mature and after years as a journalist he is a true skeptic against Hobbes’ unwavering belief that he can make things right again. Written with a touch of humor and with powerful feeling, unusual in a book that is ostensibly an action thriller, Miller has given us an opportunity to ask the deeper questions about war, the impact on the soldiers who fight them and to give name to the “collateral damage” that is inherent in all such endeavors.

Brenda’s Rating: *****(5 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Keith, Marian, Sharon and Ken

Book Study Worthy? Yes

Read in ebook format.