Waiting For Eden by Elliot Ackerman

I was surprised to see a male character with my name, Eden, and was compelled to read Waiting For Eden by Elliot Ackerman, a National Book Award finalist.

Eden Malcolm is an Iraq veteran flown home to Texas after his crew were bombed in a Humvee. Amputated from the waist down and so severely burned they didn't expect he would survive the trip, he ends up hospitalized in a three year coma, his 220 pound body now just 70. His wife Mary sits vigil through those years, watching nurses and doctors come and go. Narrated by his friend and fellow soldier who died in the bombing, we see the story from each characters point of view, travelling back to the years before deployment.

One Christmas when Mary is visiting her mother, Eden wakes up. Blind and deaf, brain damaged and hallucinating, he suffers a stroke and seizures.

Eden just wishes to die.

This is a harrowing story, often hard to read as his mind flashes back to his training exercises - how to cope if you were to be captured by the enemy. When the writing is this good, it doesn't matter what the subject is, and this is masterfully written. By page 25 I was impressed, by page 50 I was looking up his other books, and by page 100 there was the pleasing surprise readers wait for, when an unspoken twist is introduced that changes the outlook of the characters. Beautifully written, but this is not light entertainment - it's stunning and heartbreaking.

Elliot Ackerman served eight years in the Marine Corps on multiple tours of duty in the Middle East, earning a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star for valour, and this account of the affects of war rings true.

I so enjoyed the writing I want to recommend the book, although I don't know if everyone will enjoy the difficult subject. Aside from that, I have a problem with the cover, which I find so incongruous to the story it's almost ridiculous. I don't know what they were thinking - surely there were more intelligent options. I wonder what Ackerman thought of it.

2018 / Hardcover / 192 pages