Author Description

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, numerous young Americans enlisted in the US Army and took up arms against this affront to the United States. Many sidelined their pacifist ideals to focus solely on retribution. Although Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington D.C., most people no longer made any effort to differentiate it from the terrorists’ actual country of origin. For them, it was part of the same Arab world that needed to be destroyed. While his young wife Lesley concentrates on having a child, Gavin Goodnaugh, an anthropology student at UCLA, decides to participate in this idealistic national movement. During his combat training, he discovers an unsuspected attraction for leadership. Arriving on the ground as a sergeant, Gavin quickly becomes torn between the love for his wife who is hoping for a successful in vitro fertilization and a new warrior nature, which is revealed in the terrible situations that he now faces. His interest in ancient civilizations from this part of the world, which he studied in his anthropology classes, gradually fades away in reaction to the populations’ hatred, with which he is confronted on a daily basis. The terrible slaughter in a Sunni village of which he is the main perpetrator, causes, in addition to a wave of anger throughout Iraq, a legal and media frenzy throughout the United States. Sergeant Gavin Goodnaugh’s ensuing court martial unveils the atrocious reality of a war fought in the name of the American people. While the media frenetically embraces the seductive image of the young sergeant ensnared in the reprehensible behavior of a chain of command overwhelmed by the task to accomplish, Lesley starts to gradually question her own feelings towards her husband as the trial reveals the horrifying aspects of his personality. However, a coincidence of events after the verdict tragically reunites them again forever.