I'm keeping the book because I think a re-read in the future might change my perspective. Despite not being in love with the book, I do admire Powers for what he's done here and certainly respect his service to our country. Any novel that shows people the real cost of war is certainly worth the read.

And most of all, it’s about young men who should be in the height of life who are forced to be on intimate knowledge with death: “It seems absurd now that we saw each death as an affirmation of our lives. That each one of those deaths belonged to a time and that therefore that time was not ours. We didn’t know the list was limitless.”Kevin Powers volunteered to join the army and served in Iraq from 2004-2005 as a machine gunner. He was in the Tal Afar and Mosul region (see map above showing the location of the events in the novel in the Northern part of the country),and that is also the same areas patrolled by Bartle, Sterling, and Murph in the novel. I was left largely as unenlightened about Fort Berthold at the end as I was at the beginning. That said Yellow Bird isn’t an 'everything' book. Nor should it be. Its strength derives not from vast panoramas but from an intimate gaze. By looking at Clarke’s murder through Yellow Bird’s eyes, we get to see the forces that shape and ultimately unite their lives. A] story that expertly blends true crime, environmental drama, and family saga. For a first nonfiction work, Murdoch has outdone herself by telling the story in a beautifully narrative way...Required reading for all fans of true crime. There were so many similarities that, every time I found one, I couldn't help but think, "Tim O'Brien does that better." And O'Brien allows us to emotionally connect with his characters in a way that Powers never quite achieved for me. I felt sympathy, but not empathy.

It is powerful. It is a graphic testament to the pain of war. Maybe we (who weren't present) needed to be shaken out of our ignorance and complacency. Although I didn't feel that was how I was about it - I protested it vehemently - but, in truth, I wasn't in the midst of it. I used to have a Marine recruiter that lived across the street from me. I mentioned to him how devastating it was to see the names of these kids that were sitting in high school classrooms just months before they died overseas. He replied to me that they had realized the political ramifications of that and now were holding up deploying Marines to combat zones until they turned 19. He could have just been bullshitting me (He was a spin doctor patrolling the mall daily looking for kids with nothing to do.), as if 19 was so much better than 18, but I did notice that average ages of the deceased soldiers did spring up especially after Bush called up and deployed all those reservists. We keep trying to hide the crass ugliness of bodies made unrecognizable in war. And the damaged minds of those who survive. Iraq, along with Vietnam, is America’s most controversial war. Thus, it’s not surprising that The Yellow Birds conveys a message. Powers chooses to focus on the disconnect between soldiers and civilians. In one memorable scene, a stateside Private Bartles refuses to let a “patriotic” bartender buy his drinks. Later, in a mirror twinning of the novel’s opening lines, Powers writes:

BookBrowse Review

There are so many personal and not personal reasons. At one point I ask her and she says, “it just makes me happy. It makes me happy to help all of these people.” So there were all of these simple reasons. I think people will have to read the book to come around to their own conclusion and feel the full force of all of those reasons, and how they are all connected in this really essential way. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. When the mortars fell, the leaves and fruit and birds were frayed like ends of rope. They lay on the ground in scattered piles, torn feathers and leaves and the rinds of broken fruit intermingling. The sunlight fell absently through the spaces in the treetops, here and there glistening as if on water from smudges of bird blood and citrus.” I need to be a man and what better way to become one than to go fight for my country,” said the boy in a tone that brooked no argument. Then, in summer, the war tried to kill us as the heat blanched all color from the plains. The sun pressed into our skin, and the war sent its citizens rustling into the shade of white buildings. It cast a white shade on everything, like a veil over our eyes. It tried to kill us every day, but it had not succeeded. Not that our safety was preordained. We were not destined to survive. The fact is, we were not destined at all. The war would take what it could get. It was patient. It didn’t care about objectives, or boundaries, whether you were loved by many or not at all. While I slept that summer, the war came to me in my dreams and showed me its sole purpose: to go on, only to go on. And I knew the war would have its way.”

The Yellow Birds ends with a note of muted hope, and I also hope for Mr Powers, that he and his brothers and sisters find healing in the arts and literature. Some, perhaps, will find healing in religion. Featured in Angels & Urchins • Yummy Mummy • Families SW • Families North • Country Life • Nappy Valley It may be a piece of fiction, but author Kevin Powers, who served in the U.S. Army himself, clearly knows what he’s talking about and uses his impressive writing skills as a conduit to share, what I can only assume, is a true depiction of a soldier’s experience. We walked her past a copse of alder and willow that bowed in the heat of the small fires burning nearby, their old branches lamenting her, laid out as she was on that makeshift litter. Our hands began to cramp with each passing step, each taken with whatever reverence we could muster, clutching at the edges of the boards. Thin splinters roughed the flats of our palms as we walked. Listing in concert with our deliberate footsteps, the gentle curves of her body swayed beneath her torn clothes. The boards creaked. A small number of boys out on a head count stopped and turned toward us. A pale review as her body ascended the gently sloping hill, fringed by the bleached and spotted patterns of their uniforms. We conducted her pall in earnest up the remainder of the hill. At the top, we lowered her to the ground and set her under a tree on the tied-together boards, her body now translucent and blue-tinted. One of the soldiers alerted the medics and we watched them as they came to her. Her friends grabbed her and enveloped her in hugs and kisses. She rolled absently in their loving arms and they cried out beneath the setting sun…The sun set like a clot of blood on the horizon. A small fire had spread from the crumbling chapel, igniting the copse of tamarisk trees. And all the little embers burned like lamps to light my way. Lissa’s story rippled in me an awareness of what I was not seeing onscreen. Where are the indigenous stories and indigenous female stories? The book inspired me to take a deeper look into the indigenous female filmmaker community who are telling these stories. Read my profile with these filmmakers, and coming soon is my interview with indigenous filmmaker Erica Tremblay.The story is told by John Bartle, who was 21 at the time of enlistment and it’s his story along with that of Murphy, who was just 18 when he enlisted. This is my first book by the author and I was enthralled by the pictures he wove in my mind with his words. I could hear the soothing call of the muezzin over the louder and more destructive sounds of bombs and gunfire. I was in Al- Tafar with these boys and experiencing war as they went through their motions; I experienced their pain, their angst, their small moments of happiness, their reasons for their actions and above all their emotional bonding; such was the power of the prose. Alas, I have to admit that this powerful prose was not there throughout the book. Where parts of the book were brilliant in their evocation, others were a bit dragging and often confusing! The shifts in the time of narration didn’t help at all, as they confused me further! However, despite these small irks, I think Mr. Powers got across his message to me – his message of why boys go to war and what war does to these boys! We hardly noticed a change with September came. But I know now that everything that will ever matter in my life began then. Some people are just born to write. Kevin Powers, in this debut book, is certainly one of them. The Yellow Birds is breathtaking good, profoundly insightful and written with an incredible amount of emotional precision. I can add little to what my friend Jeff Keeten has said about this powerful and terrible beauty of a book. While I read it first, and recommended it to him, you won't find a better review of it than his. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...