Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

For the military veterans featured in Bonenberger (Afghan Post, 2014) and Castner's (The Long Walk, 2012) anthology, the Forever War refers less to their service than it does their struggles to return to normalcy afterward. Written by men and women with varying degrees of experience as writers and in the military, these 25 stories zero in on the disillusionment veterans face as they attempt to redefine their lives. In Operation Slut, a soldier returns home from her tour to discover her boyfriend has left her. The soldier in Bleeder kills time at his Baghdad hotel by flirting with prostitutes and paying boys to fight. Little tells of a hopelessly butch mortuary-affairs officer who falls for a skinny soldier she risks flirting with during martial-arts lessons. And in Into the Land of Dogs, a U.S. Marine sneaks out of his recovery ward, reliving the horrific details of a helicopter crash only he survived. Bonenberger and Castner's treasury captures the contemporary American soldier's experience in intimate and harrowing detail, touching on everything from loneliness to pride, death to brotherhood, and paranoia to compassion.--Fullmer, Jonathan Copyright 2016 Booklist