I want to start out by being honest with you. I am conflicted about this one. This is a story about the Iraq war. It was a finalist for the National Book Awards, and one of the New York Times 10 best books of 2012. It also won the PEN/Hemingway award. Heritage Themes of the Northern Plains: Book Discussions in the Northern Plains National Heritage Area I was reporting this story, but more in a scattered journalistic fashion, and I knew that at some point I wanted to write something bigger. I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted my focus to be, because I had observed this radical transformation of this community for some years, and I knew that transformation was going to continue. When I met Lissa I was first of all immediately taken with her because she is dynamic, and she is brilliant. She’s surprising, you know? She has all of these interesting qualities to her character that you don’t expect to find in one person. I write at the end of the book she is kind of iconoclastic, you cannot fit her in a box.

WINNER OF THE OREGON BOOK AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR® AWARD •NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Publishers Weekly Mr. Powers sees beauty and he often describes beauty in his writing: "An egret flew just over my shoulder and skimmed the water so close and I thought there was no way a body could be so close to the edge of a thing and stay there and be in control. But the tips of its wings skimmed along the water just the same. The egret didn't mind what I believed, and it tilted some and disappeared into the glare of the gone sun and it was full of grace."

Sergeant Sterling is the veteran of the group an ancient 24 year old that is trying his best to survive, but maybe not sure why he is trying so hard anymore. He is a volatile man, brutal and unpredictable. One of those guys that make you wonder if he can ever adjust to regular society again. “I hated the way he excelled in death and brutality and domination. But more than that, I hated the way he was necessary, how I needed him to jar me into action even when they were trying to kill me, how I felt like a coward until he screamed into my ear ‘Shoot these hajji f****s!’.”

But you are a man to me.. isn’t that enough?,” asked the mother not wanting to let go of her only child, who was perhaps her only reason to live. Bartle is our narrator in first person POV, highly effective for this novel, for we are placed in the mishmash of all his feelings about what is happening and what has happened, as well as in the middle of his experiences in Al Tafar, Iraq. Chapters alternate mostly between Iraq in 2004 and being home in Richmond, Virginia in 2005, showing the conditions of the war, and then, how things are for the narrator after the war. In the base gymnasium at Fort Dix, New Jersey, there is a get together with family right before deployment. Bartles mother says, “I told you not to do this, John,” then says, “I’m sorry. Let’s have a nice time.” After she’s left, Murphy’s mother, LaDonna approaches Bartles and charges him with looking after Murphy. Bartles promises he will. For this Sgt. Sterling punches him out after family members have left, saying “You shouldn’t have done that, Private.” Powers then studied English at VCU and went on to get his MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for writers at the University of Texas. He is a poet and it shows in his prose. So it was with the young heroes in this book – Bartle and Murphy – two young lads who enlisted to tell the world that they were ready to fight for their country, to become men. Their ambitions were certainly pride worthy and their dedication most profound but what they got at the end, was something that I don’t think they were prepared for or even expecting! Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins ...I've put off writing this review for a few days now while I mulled the book over because something in it just didn't work for me. And this, indeed, is a conundrum, because this novel should have been tailor-made for me. Generally speaking, I'm a fan of contemporary war novels. I don't enjoy them as escapist entertainment; I take them seriously and I respect them because I want to learn, I want to listen, I want to know what it's like to go to war without actually having to go to war. In some ways, I see it as a duty. If we're going to ask young men and women to fight and die for our country, to risk physical and emotional maiming, we sure as hell need to know precisely what it is we ask of them and honor their service by asking them only to fight when absolutely necessary. Sadly, this hasn't always been our country's policy. I can add little to what my friend Jeff Keeten has said about this powerful and terrible beauty of a book. While I read it first, and recommended it to him, you won't find a better review of it than his. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... MARTIN: Can you talk to me about the “why?” You ask this question in the book: why is Lissa so driven to find these lost people that don’t have anything to do with her? Death seems to not be noticed as much as it should, except that is, for those that have lost loved ones of kin, love, and friendship in these wars plaguing the earth. This story could possibly win the attention of those guilty of this and make the dead count for those readers in the alien region of understanding this dilemma, you feel the loss the confusion and the betrayal of this unending war in this wonderful stringed together story of fiction that could not be far from truths of the occurrences in the Iraq of recent years. This writer knows the battlefield as he served as a gunner in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, you feel the terrain in the unrelenting unforgiving desert and the human emotion coupled with the bloody reality of the task the main protagonist had before him.

Ma, you just don’t understand. Staying here will restrict my growth. I want to see the world outside, I want to do big things in life, I want….to be a MAN not a BOY!”, said the boy with an anger that was beyond the mother's comprehension. While we ate, the war fasted, fed by its own deprivation. It made love and gave birth and spread through fire. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Sierra about Lissa. I learned that Lissa has an extreme empathy for people who are discarded in society. Lissa’s story is complicated, but it also reflects the experiences of many people in her community. Sierra linked up with Lissa because of her unique perspective on the oil boom, along with her statuses as an outsider not living on the reservation and an insider who grew up in the reservation’s community. Simultaneously Sierra reported on the investigation of KC within the politics of the reservation, and the crimes related to the oil boom. She also did a deep dive into the history of the reservation. When I asked her about how she pieced the book together, she responded, “It was an interesting project where it required these very different forms of reporting, kind of wrapped up into one. And it required some kind of compartmentalization in that sense. This is the part where I’m totally in Lissa’s life, this is the part where I’m doing all of this historical and archival research, and this is the part where I’m investigating how this really happened. And I like all of those things.”Kevin Powers wrote from experience. After graduating from high school he joined the Army and was shipped to Iraq at the age of seventeen. He was a machine gunner in Mosul and Al Tafar. You know, two little towns that remained hot spots after President George W. appeared on an aircraft carrier replete with banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished."

It is certainly more poetic than books that are strictly categorized as novels these days. I think war stories in particular benefit from a more poetic, stream-of-consciousness type writing. Seldom does war itself follow a strict plot line, why would war literature do so. It is powerful. It is a graphic testament to the pain of war. Maybe we (who weren't present) needed to be shaken out of our ignorance and complacency. Although I didn't feel that was how I was about it - I protested it vehemently - but, in truth, I wasn't in the midst of it. But there is some beautiful prose in this novel, prose that contradicts the ugliness of the situation. The very personal voice of the narrator is buried in the impersonal, unfeeling circumstances:The story is told by John Bartle, who was 21 at the time of enlistment and it’s his story along with that of Murphy, who was just 18 when he enlisted. This is my first book by the author and I was enthralled by the pictures he wove in my mind with his words. I could hear the soothing call of the muezzin over the louder and more destructive sounds of bombs and gunfire. I was in Al- Tafar with these boys and experiencing war as they went through their motions; I experienced their pain, their angst, their small moments of happiness, their reasons for their actions and above all their emotional bonding; such was the power of the prose. Alas, I have to admit that this powerful prose was not there throughout the book. Where parts of the book were brilliant in their evocation, others were a bit dragging and often confusing! The shifts in the time of narration didn’t help at all, as they confused me further! However, despite these small irks, I think Mr. Powers got across his message to me – his message of why boys go to war and what war does to these boys! Why the title, The Yellow Birds? Kevin Powers took it from a traditional marching cadence that's been around a long time. We see everything through the eyes of Private Bartle who is desensitized by the war, so spiritually removed from his day to day activity that without ingrained training I wonder if he could have functioned at all. Despite the fact that Bartle is shutting down, aging with each new horrific experience, he has these moments where he describes a scene so vividly, so wonderfully, that I actually felt my heart rate increase because words excite me. His war buddy is Murph and though he cares about Murph there is this distance between him and everyone as if all that he experiences is happening to someone else. Survival instinct or someone who has reached a limit of emotional response?