Missionaries by Phil Klay

In the immortal words of Bruce Springsteen, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn91L9goKfQ), "War! What is it good for?" Phil Klay, an Iraq war veteran and debut novelist, might echo the Boss.  "Absolutely nothing!"

Klay, like many soldier-novelists before him, (Karl Marlantes' "Matterhorn" comes to mind) brings a searing honesty and the visceral horror of war to the page in ways that may cause some readers to have to look away. And this is part of what infuriates him. How dare we send our young men and women off to fight for dubious reasons and then forget where they even are and what they are seeing every day in the field.

"Missionaries" follows four disparate characters as their lives intertwine in the killing fields of Columbia during the so-called war on drugs. Mason, a medic seeking a safer assignment now that he's a father, and Lisette, a correspondent hoping to make a name for herself in long form journalism, thought they had experienced the worst in Afghanistan. Yet in Columbia Abel saw his entire village destroyed by narco terrorists and Juan Pablo, a military man, is losing control of the various factions vying for power over the cocaine trade. Graft and corruption is rampant. Those who refuse to pay face the enforcers who seem to change every few months. No one can trust anyone.

Klay is an exquisite wordsmith. His powerful collection of short stories, "Redeployment," won the National Book Award in 2014. He excels at depicting the absurdity of war and the oh-so-human responses of soldiers to disfigurement and death, the way black humor is used to deflect emotions that might ravage a person. He also nails the interpersonal relationships of couples long separated by overseas assignments as they try to maintain honesty while abstaining from truths that might be more than each partner could bear to hear.

"Missionaries" is a brutal history lesson in the globalization of warfare in the 21st century, providing a window into the tricky ways that countries defuse blame as each contributes to the creation of modern drone technology allowing violence to be rained down on the innocent from the comfort of a trailer nestled in the suburban hills outside London or DC.

My initial critique of this book was that it could have benefited from a strategic editing of its over four hundred pages, but in retrospect, I've changed my mind. When a soldier-writer bares his soul on the page the very least we can do is bear witness.