Carrying

Theodore Weesner (The Car Thief) launches his first new novel in fifteen years: Carrying, a gritty and realistic work of fiction that throws the reader into the detonating heart of the first Iraqi war (Kuwait). With unapologetic candor, Weesner navigates literary cherry bombs surrounding young warrior and South Boston native Jimmy Murphy, who writes a secret journal to his old English Professor, Herman Roth. Weesner's contrapuntal narrative elegantly weaves two gripping journeys between Roth's struggles with his waning academic career while Jimmy's life pulsates with rage, racial prejudice, desire, and the struggles of a "Southie" who must confront personal demons to become a top gunner in one of the U.S. Military's elite fighting groups. Jimmy's rapid rise through the ranks to become a top-flight tank gunner gives him a sense of purpose and direction in a war that rapidly becomes ruthless. Iraq transforms into a wasteland of burning oil wells layered with the stench of burned corpses, as the 2nd Cavalry tank division obliterate the Iraqi army. And when it's all over, will he really be able to leave it behind? This timely and beautifully written novel, by a great American writer inserts itself into the zeitgeist about the legions of young men and women who return home but never quite leave the battlefield, carrying the deepest wounds of heartbreak, shock, fear, and aggression, and how one soldier comes of age in the age of terror and endless war.