Fives and Twenty-Fives

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, September 2014: Normally, working a road crew would be the ultimate mundane job. But in Iraq, where every pothole carries the threat of a deadly booby trap, the duties of a road repair platoon are as fraught as a firefight. The title of this unflinching and important debut—written by an ex-Marine who served two tours in Iraq—refers to the platoon’s ground rules on bomb searching. When they stop to repair a pothole, they first scan the immediate five meters; a bomb detonated in that circle would obliterate them all. Next they sweep the twenty-five meters in every direction. In putting us right in the heat and the dust, inside the helmets and Kevlar vests that chafe the skin, Michael Pitre shows us that the battlefields of modern warfare are far more complex and bizarre than the American public might imagine. The story is told from three perspectives: the platoon leader, his medic, and their Iraqi translator, a fan of hip-hop and Huck Finn, all of them looking back on the catastrophe that shattered their world. Pitre is a nervy, funny writer, with an ear for dialogue and banter. And he’s not shy about commenting on America’s role in the world, and on the haunted postwar lives of its soldiers. In this bold novel, he’s added his voice to the collection of vital works by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. —Neal Thompson