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Published Aug 2017
256 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From Fobbit author David Abrams, Brave Deeds is a compelling novel of war, brotherhood, and America.
Spanning eight hours, the novel follows a squad of six AWOL soldiers as they attempt to cross war-torn Baghdad on foot to attend the funeral of their leader, Staff Sergeant Rafe Morgan. As the men make their way to the funeral, they recall the most ancient of warriors yet are a microcosm of twenty-first-century America, and subject to the same human flaws as all of us. Drew is reliable in the field but unfaithful at home; Cheever, overweight and whining, is a friend to no one - least of all himself; and platoon commander Dmitri "Arrow" Arogapoulos is stalwart, yet troubled with questions about his own identity and sexuality. Emotionally resonant, true-to-life, and thoughtfully written, Brave Deeds is a gripping story of combat and of perserverance, and an important addition to the oeuvre of contemporary war fiction.
"Starred Review. Describing the soldiers' perilous journey while filling in details of their backgrounds and the military situation in Iraq, this excellent novel is believable, dramatic, and also quite funny." - Library Journal
"Filled with vivid characterizations and memorable moments, this novel - as with classic modern war literature from John Hersey's Into the Valley to David Halberstam's One Very Hot Day - turns a single military action into a microcosm of an entire war." - Publishers Weekly
"A powerful story on its surface, a soldier's story laced with vulgarities and gallows humor, but also a story holding deeper interpretations of our troubled Middle Eastern misadventures." - Kirkus
"Brave Deeds perfectly captures the strange mixture of camaraderie, humor, beauty and brutality experienced by men at war. It reads like a fever dream, like unvarnished documentary truth, and sometimes like both at once." - Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment
"David Abrams has written a flat-out brilliant book of the Iraq War, one that reads like a compact version of the Odyssey or Going After Cacciato. Soldiers on a journey - it's one of humankind's oldest stories, and Abrams has given us the latest dispatch from the field, to stunning effect." - Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
"At the beginning of Brave Deeds I was laughing out loud, and enjoying the feeling of being among the Army squad, even one making an insane walk through Baghdad. But by the end of the book I was silent: I was really undone by it. David Abrams has done something very powerful, drawing together the different layers of this story so beautifully, and drawing us down below the surface to a place of darkness and sadness. It's a tour de force. Bravo." - Roxana Robinson, author of Sparta
"I have never read another author with David Abrams's uncanny knack for laugh-out-loud sarcasm one instant and gutting compassion in the next ... Brave Deeds is hilarious, subversive, devastating, beautiful, human, and written with the kind of skillful light touch we expect from master fiction writers." - Andria Williams, author of The Longest Night
This information about Brave Deeds was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Lisa Wareham Photography
David Abrams was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in Jackson, Wyoming. He earned a BA in English from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Abrams served in the U.S. Army for twenty years, He was named the Department of Defense's Military Journalist of the Year in 1994 and received several other military commendations throughout his career. His tours of duty took him to Thailand, Japan, Africa, Alaska, Texas, Georgia and The Pentagon. In 2005, he was deployed to Iraq as part of a public affairs team. The journal he kept during that year formed the blueprint for the novel which would later become known as Fobbit. Abram's stories have appeared in Esquire, Narrative, and other literary magazines. He now lives in Butte, Montana...
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