The Year of Magical Thinking meets Fifteen Days in this literary exploration of one Canadian's decision to enlist and go to war.
What compels a young, affluent Canadian to put on a uniform and risk his life for the controversial mission in Afghanistan? And how does his family cope with his loss when he is killed there? Jeff Francis was a thirty-year-old doctoral candidate and student of Buddhism when he decided that joining the armed forces was the best way to make a difference in the world. In elegant, spare prose that captures both the hardness of war and the nuances of a grieving family, Melanie Murray - Captain Francis's aunt - uses the lens of his life and death to give Canada's war in Afghanistan the perceptive, literary treatment its soldiers, families and citizens deserve.