The Strong Man
by Matt Briggs

Matt Briggs follows up his 2004 American Book Award-winning novel, Shoot the Buffalo, with the story of Ben Wallace, a hospital lab tech who joins the Army reserve as a way to slight his father, a Vietnam-era draft dodger. When Ben is called up for Operation Desert Shield, the first Gulf War, he realizes he wants to experience what his grandfather has called 'the enlightenment of war'.