Daybreak
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this “vital novel that arrives at a perilous time” (Elliot Ackerman, New York Times bestselling author), a disillusioned American veteran volunteers for the war in Ukraine to reconnect with a woman from his past.
Thirty-three-year-old Luke “Pax” Paxton has been out of the military for almost a decade, adrift in an America he no longer understands, haunted by a mistake made in an unforgiving moment of combat. When an old army friend suggests they travel to Ukraine to help fight against the Russian invasion, he agrees, and together they cross an ocean to Lviv, the City of Lions. But Pax isn’t merely going out of the goodness of his heart. He carries with him the address of a former love, a Ukrainian woman named Svitlana whom he had known as a young soldier and has been unable to forget.
His feverish journey through Lviv takes him down winding and missile-cratered streets as he forms surprising connections with everyone from humanitarian volunteers to displaced Ukrainians and ordinary citizens trying to survive. And when Pax gets the chance to save someone dear to Svitlana, he just might be able to correct the wrongs that have wracked him with guilt for so many years.
Inspired by the author’s time in Ukraine, “Matt Gallagher has written the first great military-inspired novel of this post-Global War on Terror era” (Bill McCloud, author of What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam?).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gallagher (Empire City) returns with an affecting chronicle of a former U.S. soldier who finds meaning by joining Ukraine's fight against Russia. Five years out of the Army and at loose ends, Luke Paxton accompanies his fellow Afghanistan veteran, Han Lee, to Ukraine in winter 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion. Arriving in Lviv, Pax looks up his former lover, Svitlana, whom he met in Milan in between tours in Afghanistan. At first Svitlana is cool toward him, and it turns out she's separated from her lawyer husband, who's at the front, and has a young son with eye problems. Judged unfit for combat because of his general discharge from the Army (the story behind this comes out later), Pax goes to work in a warehouse unloading supplies from the U.S. Then, news from the front forces him to join a dangerous mission that will allow him to exorcise the ghosts of his past. Gallagher's plot artfully connects the present-day conflict to previous wars by referencing such stories as A Farewell to Arms and Casablanca without sacrificing a sense of urgency. This harrowing account of life in a besieged Ukraine reads like a bulletin from the front lines.
