Spoils

First-time novelist Van Reet trains his dispassionate eye on three soldiers in post-9/11 Iraq: Cassandra, a 19-year-old marine specialist; Abu al-Hool, an aging Afghani mujahideen fighter challenged by a younger leader; and Sleed, an older marine who wears hardened cynicism like armor. Van Reet's credentials—he was an Echols Scholar who left academia to join the U.S. Army after September 11—lend authority to this unnerving tale. No detail is superfluous. Van Reet forces readers to confront a daily existence that brutalizes even the toughest characters. We stand alongside Cassandra, who outside a bunker overhears men gossiping about who among them might have raped a female soldier—someone Cassandra knew but was too afraid to support. We feel al-Hool's grief as he mentors a disciple who reminds him of his son, who was killed on a suicide mission 10 years earlier in Chechnya. We lie next to Sleed in the dirty sand as he's awoken, after a blast knocks him unconscious, by a stray dog licking his face as he marvels, "It'd been so long since [I]'d touched any living creature in a gentle way." The capture of Cassandra connects these three lives, resulting in more death. This war novel with a human heart is powerful stuff.