Tree Of Life — Bruce W. Perry

Previously published as Accidental Exiles by Bruce W. Perry.Tree Of Life is a three-part novel that takes place near the Swiss border with Italy, as well as in Southern France and Africa. A number of memory passages are set in North Texas, as well as in Baghdad and Ramadi, Iraq.Jesse McCallister, a young Texan and Iraq War vet, escapes to Europe where he seeks a new direction and to heal psychic and physical wounds that he suffered in the Middle East.Wandering the streets of Ascona, Switzerland, he meets a beautiful Italian waitress named Sonya Altorelli. Jesse has plenty of cash in his pocket from the sale of his parent's Plano, Texas property, but he's rootless, searching, and AWOL since the Army has called him back for another Iraq tour. Since the horrors of combat he encountered with a boyhood friend we gradually meet over the course of the book, Tyler Conroy, Jesse will have nothing more to do with war. The story is his farewell to arms.On the shores of the lake, Sonya and Jesse fall in with expats led by a mysterious, generous young American tycoon named Michael Barnes. Barnes has a beautiful villa on the lake, an Aston Martin, and the brio and money to fuel their wine and absinthe parties. Jesse first meets Barnes on the ferry from Locarno; Jesse has lost his passport and Michael immediately offers to replace it, to not leave a fellow American in the lurch. He claims that my father used to be the ambassador to Switzerland-Jesse's taken by the offer but not quite sure if Barnes is lying to him or not.He tempts Jesse to change his nationality, and the former soldier takes the bait.The plot takes a perilous turn when, on a whim, Barnes funds an orphanage in the war-torn Ivory Coast. The outcasts leave for Africa, where a different fate awaits the hedonistic, yet seemingly doomed cast. Jesse cannot escape his fate as a warrior and a defender.From Kirkus Reviews on the earlier Accidental Exiles~In 2008, 26-year-old Jesse McCallister is fresh from the battlefields of Iraq. Rather than returning to the Army for an ordered third tour, Jesse ...flees his native Texas for Europe. He'd just wanted to go, Perry writes, and watch the flat horizons of the Iraqi desert and North Texas recede in his rear-view mirror.While the immediate moment is filled with pleasure, Jesse can't escape the traumas of combat in Ramadi...The novel resembles the post-World War I Lost Generation works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, most notably the latter's The Sun Also Rises ...The author effectively builds on his historical model while making it relevant to the key events of the contemporary era, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the Iraq War.A skillful tale of an American's trauma and expatriation.~Kirkus Reviews (May 2016)