Accidental Exiles — Bruce W. Perry

An Iraq vet's memories of war and a Texas childhood dovetail with his carrying-ons among glamorous expats in Europe.

~Kirkus Reviews~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)

~Self Publisher's Review on Accidental Exiles, April 2017~The language is poetic and well-written, with character interactions that are crisp and packed with meaning. Great care with dialogue is obvious and poignant descriptions are everywhere, making this book a genuine pleasure to read. It is hard not to respect any author who is able to capture the terror and heartbreaking nature of war, while also detailing the delicate heartbreak of missed chances and lost love, and Perry achieves both with a deftly-subtle hand.

The tone is consistent, the pacing is perfect, and the plot is striking in a way that fiction often lacks. There is a great deal of subtle writing and intense scenes packed with detail that can easily be missed or overlooked. That is the beauty of Perry's terse, brief language, a la Hemingway. It leaves a great deal of room for readers' interpretation, while still being viscerally emotional.