Synopses & Reviews
In this powerful debut novel, three American soldiers haunted by their actions in Afghanistan search for absolution and human connection in family and civilian life. Wintric Ellis joins the army as soon as he graduates from high school, saying goodbye to his girlfriend, Kristen, and to the backwoods California town whose borders have always been the limits of his horizon. Deployed in Afghanistan two years into a directionless war, he struggles to find his bearings in a place where allies could at any second turn out to be foes. Two career soldiers, Dax and Torres, take Wintric under their wing. Together, these three men face an impossible choice: risk death or commit a harrowing act of war. The aftershocks echo long after each returns home to a transfigured world, where his own children may fear to touch him and his nightmares still hold sway.
Jesse Goolsby casts backward and forward in time to track these unforgettable characters from childhood to parenthood, from redwood forests to open desert roads to the streets of Kabul. Hailed by Robert Olen Butler as a “major literary event,” I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them is a work of disarming eloquence and heart-wrenching wisdom, and a debut novel from a writer to watch.
Review
"A hard-eyed depiction of modern warfare leavened slightly by its Western spirit, Gwyn's novel is rich in equestrian and military detail...it'd take wild horses to pull you away. B+" --Entertainment Weekly
"The books pacing is cinematic, and it echoes adrenalized silver-screen war stories like Three Kings and The Hurt Locker, as well as the gentler cross-species concerns of The Horse Whisperer." -- John Williams, The New York Times
"Gwyn depicts the eventful mission with tight dramatic control and a flair for suspenseful twists. His cleverest touch is to transplant the vintage conventions of the Western into his battle pieces...'Wynne's War' evokes John Fords 'The Searchers,' and the same ambiguities that surround John Waynes ruthlessly single-minded Ethan Edwards come to define Wynne." --The Wall Street Journal
"A straightforward, tautly written soldiers tale where military goal, leadership, character, battlefield friendship and the degree of acceptable human sacrifice are the main concerns.” --The Chicago Tribune's Printers Row Journal
"A work of narrative alchemy, Aaron Gwyns ambitious second novel, “Wynnes War,” is a prose smelter brimming with horses, soldiers, heroism, villainy, horrific violence and unexpected tenderness…The real wonder of this novel, though, is that its also a page-turning romp… Theres entertainment aplenty and characters whose lives are real enough to have been lived. If you find tear stains on your shoulders when you turn the last page, they are likely yours, shed out of the sadness that only comes when you wish there were pages left to turn." - Houston Chronicle
"Gwyns (Dog on the Cross) story is a gripping tale of men at war in the desolate snow-capped mountains of eastern Afghanistan, and captures the essence of close combat—the terror, excitement, chaos, tension, and cruelty, as well as the harsh decisions men make under stress...its gritty realism is part of the strength." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
"The book pulsates with a verisimilitude that places readers in the war-torn mountains of Afghanistan...Many folks have wondered when American authors would begin producing memorable fiction about the Iraq-Afghanistan wars; with this well-researched, heart-pounding novel, Gwyn stakes his claim." - Library Journal
"Gwyns combat scenes are realistic, meticulous, and passionate…" — Booklist
"This novel feels like Cormac McCarthy meets Tim OBrien. I could not stop reading it." — Philipp Meyer, author of The Son
“Wynne's War is a deep and beautifully written story of men, war, and madness, told by a young American master. A page-turner of poetic and savage grace, of our time but transcending it, this novel takes its rightful place among the great American literature of war.” — Nic Pizzolatto, author of Galveston, creator of HBO's True Detective
"I havent had this much fun as a reader in a long time. Wynne's War is a great adventure story, impeccably researched, masterfully plotted, with chapters that blur by like a hail of bullets." — Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon
"Wynnes War combines two of Americas great literary genres, the Western and the war story, brilliantly. This taut, elegant, beautiful novel takes us straight to the tension at the heart of combat decision-making: mission or men." — Nathaniel Fick, author of One Bullet Away
“Propellant storytelling in the tradition of McCarthy and Conrad. A gripping morality tale told with bristling exactitude.” - Paul Lynch, author of Red Sky in Morning
Review
"Powerful."—
ESQUIRE "Impressive ... Goolsby creates resonant, believable characters with richly detailed lives, people we simply want to know more about."—TAMPA BAY TIMES
"Add Jesse Goolsby to the list of promising military-experienced writers including Phil Klay."—MILITARY TIMES
"Traveling back and forth through time, Goolsby explores the challenges these men face before,during, and after their military tours, portraying their stresses vividly and palpably. While depicting realistic and personal images of the psychological traumas of war, he leaves...readers to draw their own conclusions."— BOOKLIST
"This bracing, riveting debut opens in Afghanistan, and actions there shadow the lives of Goolsby's characters. But it's the accidents, debts, and desires of the home front that continue to wreak havoc as war memories turn into just that — memories — and soldiers mired in the past realize that tackling the future may be their true struggle after all."—SIOBHAN FALLON, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone
"I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them offers a heartbreaking and humane lens into the lives of those connected to war, refusing to avert its gaze when confronted with even the most gut-wrenching situations. Jesse Goolsby recognizes that the battlefield stretches far beyond the demarcations of a combat zone, or the borders of Afghanistan. That said, this is not strictly a book about war — this is a book about the human heart. This is the news, rarely told, of the actual world we live in."—BRIAN TURNER, author of My Life as a Foreign Country
“Long after the combatants and non-combatants alike have vanished from this earth, the afterlife of war is a book, war’s only survivor, and every true book about war cries out, Stop, or at least, Remember. I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them, Jesse Goolsby’s ambitious, multi-layered, brutally honest debut novel, is such a book, an antidote to our nation’s disconnect from our misadventures overseas.”—BOB SHACOCHIS, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul
"Not only is Jesse Goolsby one of the very rare authors who writes with authoritative insight into the warfare of the 21st century, he does so with an even deeper insight into the profound yearning for connection, for identity, that drives us all. Goolsby is a consummate artist, and the publication of I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them is a major literary event.”—ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"I just read the most satisfying novel in years, Jesse Goolsby's I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them. It is not just a war novel, but rather an earthquake-in-your-soul novel. That art that shakes you down. I am blown away."—MICHAEL GARRIGA, author of The Book of Duels
Synopsis
An elite platoon of Special Forces soldiers infiltrates a forbidding Afghan war zone on horseback in search of vast treasure in this lyrical, thrilling blend of military fiction and Western.
Synopsis
When Corporal Elijah Russells superb horsemanship is revealed during a firefight in northern Iraq, the young Army Ranger is assigned to an elite Special Forces unit preparing to stage a secret mission in eastern Afghanistan. Elijahs task is to train the Green Berets — fiercely loyal to their enigmatic commander, Captain Wynne — to ride the horses they will use to execute this mission through treacherous mountain terrain. But as the team presses farther into enemy territory, the nature of their operation only becomes more mysterious and Wynnes charismatic power takes on a darker cast. Ultimately, Elijah finds himself forced to make a choice: on one side, his best friend and his most deeply held beliefs; on the other, a commanding officer driven by a messianic zeal for his mission.
Based on the authors extensive interviews with Green Berets, Army Rangers, and other veterans, this taut page-turner brilliantly fuses the war novel and the Western into a compellingly original tale.
Synopsis
The Western and the war story combine when an elite Special Forces unit searches for treasure on horseback in the borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Synopsis
In this powerful debut novel, three American soldiers haunted by their actions in Afghanistan search for absolution and human connection in family and civilian life.
About the Author
JESSE GOOLSBY is an Air Force officer and the author of the novel I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them. His fiction and essays have appeared in Narrative, Epoch, the Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, the Greensboro Review, and other publications. He is the recipient of the Richard Bausch Fiction Prize, the John Gardner Memorial Award in Fiction, and a Holland & Knight Distinguished Fellowship from the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts. He has earned honorable mentions in both The Best American Essays and The Best American Short Stories, and his work has been included in The Best American Mystery Stories. Goolsby was raised in Chester, California, and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida.