The Sandbox
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Operating Base Cornucopia. A three-hundred-year-old fortress in the remote Iraqi desert where a few dozen soldiers wait for their next assignment, among them Private Toby Durrant, a self-described "broke nobody." Then a deadly ambush touches off events that put Durrant in the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy. Insurgents massing in the nearby hills, a secretive member of military intelligence, an abandoned toy factory and a mysterious, half-feral child—Durrant must figure out the links between them if he's to survive. This blistering look at military life in "the sandbox" of Iraq marks the debut of a major new talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zimmerman s remarkable debut succeeds both as a realistic portrayal of the current Iraq war from the American perspective and as an energetic thriller. Stationed at a remote and poorly equipped U.S. army base in the Iraqi desert, Pvt. Toby Durrant worries about his pregnant fianc e back home. After a remotely detonated bomb kills two soldiers, Toby s commander, Lieutenant Blankenship, recruits him to monitor the accuracy of a translator, and then to interrogate two Iraqi prisoners suspected of being involved in the attack. Well aware of his lack of qualifications, Toby, who made a number of bad choices as a civilian, can t help thinking something else is going on, especially after the prisoners turn up dead. His difficulties escalate with the arrival of a military intelligence officer, who asks him for information about Blankenship. Readers will empathize with the author s everyman narrator as Toby tries to survive while maintaining his humanity. Zimmerman is a talent to watch.
