Excerpt from Neverhome by Laird Hunt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was that same sergeant taught us how to fix bayonets in our Springfields and stab at men made of straw and form a line and, for those that didn't know how already, shoot. I already said earlier I knew how to shoot, and fifty yards or five hundred, it wasn't much different in that camp. I could make my Springfield hit whatever it was they wanted me to wherever they wanted to put it and it didn't matter if they stood behind us while we were at it and yelled in our ears or beat to breaking on a drum. There was plenty who could march or stand longer than I could or stab straw fiercer, but it was only a few could beat me with a gun.

I wrote Bartholomew about it, and in the next letter I had from him he said that was fine and I ought to be proud but that—like we had talked about—if I didn't want the curious eyes of the entire company on me, every once in a while I needed to miss. I wrote him back that maybe it wouldn't be so awful a thing to get noticed for what I was and sent home. He wrote that he wanted me back with him more than anything on the green good earth but that I shouldn't come. That he knew I wasn't ready to come home yet, that if I didn't stay to see some of the fight I would forever be filled with the echoes of regret and the ague of remorse.

There was a fellow had his tent near ours who looked wiser than the others and I asked him after I had had this letter from Bartholomew whether he thought love ought to trump duty. "Love? What in hell is love?" said this wise-looking man and spat.

Excerpted from the book Neverhome by Laird Hunt. Copyright © 2014 by Laird Hunt. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company.